#culling tips

[gondiiknowsbest]

say more about how you got your cullees :) please, im very interested

o Thank You For Indulging Me! HeHe o

o My Marigo I Had Found All Alone One Night. He Was Freshly Released From A Local Medicull Ward, Having Lost A Leg In A Terrible Accident. It Was... Painful To Watch, Admittedly. I Helped Him Get A Prosthetic, And Walked Him Around For Several Nights While He Adjusted o

o Hes A Total Sweetheart Now, Always Helping Out Where He Can. o

o Wilson Was Out Alone One Night, Near Daybreak, As Well. Poor Thing Looked Terrified. As I Would Later Learn, Hes Got Terrible Anxiety. We're Working On Managing That Now. Hes Doing Much, Much Better With Someone To Look Out For Him Rather Than Dealing With Life All Alone o

o I Keep Close Track Of What Makes My Cullees Feel Safe- For Faeree, Its Purrbeasts. For Wilson, Its Having Somewhere To Hide. Et Cetera. For Marigo, Its Having Something To Do. While Its Always Handy, Its Most Useful The First Few Nights, When Theyre Still Warming Up To You. Little Culler Tip For You HeHe o

[heliosynchronisity]

ok @ ppl who are shidding their pants at all the ai garbage in google image searches, well first of all use duck duck go for most things anyway BUT their image indexing is kinda mid so if you have to use google, just slap 'before:2020' (or any other previous year) after your search. no ai images, nilch. no half working adblock datalist just one parameter. I did a quick test to see if it can also help me find old school digital art and dude... the fuckign difference

[techedgey]

Guide How to Optimizing Your Gaming PC for Ray Tracing

In the ever-evolving world of How to Optimize Gaming PC for Ray Tracing, few technologies have made as massive an effect in current years as ray tracing. This rendering approach simulates the bodily behavior of light to create stunningly sensible reflections, shadows, and international illumination. But as many gamers speedy find out, enabling those attractive consequences can placed even effective systems on their knees.

I nonetheless keep in mind the first time I enabled ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077. My as soon as-clean gameplay changed into a slideshow presentation, and I learned the difficult manner that optimizing a gaming PC for ray tracing calls for more than simply flipping a switch in the settings menu.

Whether you've been scouring Reddit posts approximately how to optimize gaming PC for ray tracing, searching for excellent ray tracing optimizations, or diving into technical discussions approximately r raytracing culling techniques, this comprehensive guide will assist you in squeezing the exceptional overall performance out of your hardware even as taking part in those excellent ray-traced visuals.

Table of Contents

Understanding Ray Tracing Technology

Hardware Requirements for Ray Tracing

Software Optimizations for Ray Tracing

DLSS, FSR, and XeSS: Your Ray Tracing Allies

Ray Tracing Culling Techniques

Step-via-Step Optimization Guide

Monitoring and Fine-Tuning Performance

Reddit-Approved Ray Tracing Tweaks

Future-Proofing Your Ray Tracing Setup

Conclusion

Understanding Ray Tracing Technology

Before we dive into optimization strategies, it's crucial to recognize what makes ray tracing so worrying on your hardware.

Traditional rasterization rendering (what games have used for many years) works by converting 3D models into 2D pixels for your display, then applying lights and effects in a while. It's fast but is based on various shortcuts and approximations for lighting fixtures.

Ray tracing, however, simulates character mild rays, tracing their path as they leap off surfaces, refract thru materials, and in the end attain the virtual digicam. This physically accurate technique creates a great deal extra realistic lighting fixtures, reflections, shadows, and international illumination—however at a fantastic computational fee.

A pal of mine who works in recreation improvement explained it to me in this manner: "Imagine having to calculate the direction of thousands and thousands of light rays, 60 instances in keeping with second, at the same time as additionally dealing with all of the different factors of rendering a sport. That's why ray tracing is this type of overall performance hog."

Hardware Requirements for Ray Tracing

Let's be honest—optimizing your gaming PC for ray tracing starts with having the right hardware. While software program tweaks can help, they can handiest take you so far if your system doesn't meet the basic requirements.

Graphics Cards

For ray tracing, your GPU is the star of the display:

NVIDIA RTX Series: The pioneers of consumer ray tracing hardware, from the 2000 collection to the brand new 5000 series (as of early 2025). The RTX 4080 and 4090 are presently among the exceptional performers for ray tracing workloads, with the 5000 collection showing promising upgrades.

AMD Radeon RX Series: Starting with the RX 6000 collection, AMD delivered ray tracing competencies, with performance enhancement notably in the RX 7000 collection and more recent models.

Intel Arc Series: Intel's committed GPUs additionally help ray tracing, even though they're still gambling catch-up with NVIDIA and AMD in phrases of raw ray tracing overall performance.

I learned this lesson the hard manner after I tried permitting ray tracing on my vintage GTX 1080. The recreation technically allowed me to turn it on, but the framerate dropped to approximately three FPS—essentially a completely pricey slideshow.

CPU Requirements

While ray tracing is on the whole GPU-intensive, your CPU still performs an important function:

A contemporary multi-center processor (6+ cores encouraged)

High unmarried-thread performance for sport common sense

Sufficient CPU cache and memory bandwidth

RAM and Storage

Other components that affect ray tracing overall performance:

16GB RAM minimum, 32GB advocated for excessive-quit systems

Fast NVMe SSD storage to deal with the larger texture and asset facts that frequently accompany ray-traced video games

Software Optimizations for Ray Tracing

Once you have got appropriate hardware, software program optimizations grow to be crucial for balancing visual first-class and overall performance.

Driver Updates

This would possibly appear apparent, but I've visible countless Reddit threads in which customers whinge about bad ray tracing performance only to discover they are going for walks with old drivers.

NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel frequently launch motive force updates especially optimized for ray tracing in new games

Sometimes, a driver replacement on my own can improve ray tracing overall performance by way of 10-15%

Just closing month, I changed into struggling with stuttering in a ray-traced game until I found out I had skipped the ultimate two-driver updates. After updating, the difference becomes nighttime and day.

Game-Specific Settings

Not all ray tracing effects are created identically. Most video games provide unique tiers of ray tracing:

Ray-traced shadows: Generally the least worrying effect

Ray-traced reflections: Moderate performance impact but very visually awesome

Ray-traced worldwide illumination: Usually the maximum disturbing putting

A smart technique is to permit simplest the ray tracing outcomes that make the largest visual difference for each specific game. For example, in a sport with lots of water and glass, ray-traced reflections might be worth the performance hit, whilst ray-traced shadows might be less noticeable.

DLSS, FSR, and XeSS: Your Ray Tracing Allies

One of the only ray tracing optimizations is pairing it with upscaling technologies:

NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling)

DLSS uses AI to upscale video games from a lower internal resolution in your display decision, dramatically enhancing performance even as preserving visual pleasant. DLSS three.Five and more recent variations are specially powerful at maintaining ray tracing detail.

My private experience: Enabling DLSS 3 in Cyberpunk 2077 took my framerate from an unplayable 25 FPS to a smooth 75 FPS with ray tracing nonetheless enabled.

AMD FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution)

AMD's solution to DLSS works throughout a much wider variety of hardware, together with NVIDIA GPUs. While early variations couldn't healthy DLSS quality, FSR three.0 and more recent variations have narrowed the space notably.

Intel XeSS

Intel's go-platform upscaling technology works further to DLSS and FSR, offering any other alternative for enhancing overall performance while retaining ray tracing first-rate.

When browsing a way to optimize gaming PC for ray tracing Reddit discussions, upscaling technology are continuously the most endorsed answer for balancing first-rate and overall performance.

Ray Tracing Culling Techniques

Now let's dive into one of the extra technical elements of ray tracing optimization: culling.

R raytracing culling refers to strategies that reduce the range of rays that want to be calculated by well determining which of them are not likely to make contributions drastically to the very last photograph.

What is Ray Culling?

In easy phrases, ray culling is ready being selective with which mild rays you calculate. There's no want to hint rays that may not have a great impact at the final photo.

Several culling techniques exist:

Frustum culling: Only calculating rays in the participant's view

Occlusion culling: Skipping rays that could be blocked using opaque items

Distance culling: Reducing ray detail for remote items

R raytracing culling radius: Limiting the distance that rays will tour from their origin

A recreation developer pal explained it to me like this: "Without culling, ray tracing would be like calculating each single photon in a scene. With culling, we are being smart approximately which light paths truly rely to what the participant sees."

Implementing Ray Culling

For developers the usage of engines like Unreal or Unity, r raytracing culling alternatives are often to be had within the rendering settings. For game enthusiasts, these optimizations are typically dealt with below the hood, however expertise them facilitates give an explanation for why positive settings affect performance the manner they do.

Some video games with superior snapshot settings allow tweaking culling-related parameters:

Ray tracing distance: How a long way ray-traced outcomes increase from the digital camera

Ray bounce limit: How in many instances a ray can jump earlier than the calculation stops

Culling threshold: The important degree below which rays are culled

When I experimented with those settings in the latest sport, I found that lowering the ray tracing distance from "Ultra" to "High" advanced my performance by approximately 20% with minimum visual distinction in the course of ordinary gameplay.

Step-via-Step Optimization Guide

Now that we understand the foundations, permits create a sensible, step-by-step technique for How to Optimize Gaming PC for Ray Tracing:

1. Update Your System

Update GPU drivers to the modern-day model

Ensure Windows is up to date

Update your recreation to the ultra-modern patch

2. Enable GPU Hardware Scheduling

On Windows 10/11:

Go to Settings > System > Display

Click on Graphics settings

Turn on "Hardware-multiplied GPU scheduling"

Restart your pc

This setting offloads some image scheduling from the CPU to the GPU, doubtlessly enhancing ray tracing overall performance.

Three. Configure Nvidia Control Panel / AMD Radeon Software

For NVIDIA users:

Right-click on the computer and select "NVIDIA Control Panel"

Navigate to "Manage 3-D settings"

Set "Power control mode" to "Prefer most overall performance"

Set "Texture filtering - Quality" to "Performance"

Ensure "CUDA - GPUs" has your GPU selected

For AMD customers:

Open AMD Radeon Software

Go to the Gaming tab

Select your sport or add it if not listed

Set "GPU Workload" to "Graphics"

Consider putting "Anti-Lag" to "Enabled"

Four. Optimize In-Game Settings

Start with ray tracing set to "Medium" or equivalent

Enable DLSS/FSR/XeSS (set to "Balanced" or "Performance" mode)

Reduce these settings which heavily impact performance:

Volumetric lights/fog

Screen area reflections (redundant with ray-traced reflections)

Shadow pleasant (for non-ray-traced shadows)

Particle results nice

Consider decreasing the decision to 1440p if you're on a 4K display

Five. Monitor and Adjust

Use an on-screen show device like MSI Afterburner to reveal:

Framerate

GPU usage

VRAM usage

Temperatures

Aim for stable overall performance rather than maximum settings

I carried out these actual steps while putting in Cyberpunk 2077 on my buddy's new gaming PC. By cautiously balancing the settings, we have been capable of reap 60+ FPS with ray tracing enabled on his RTX 4070, which to start with struggled to preserve even 45 FPS with default "RT Ultra" settings.

Monitoring and Fine-Tuning Performance

Achieving optimal ray tracing overall performance is an iterative method. Here are a few gear and strategies to help you monitor and great-song your setup:

Performance Monitoring Tools

MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner: The gold preferred for in-recreation performance monitoring

NVIDIA FrameView / AMD Radeon Performance Metrics: Vendor-unique gear with distinct metrics

HWiNFO: For monitoring machine temperatures and figuring out potential thermal throttling

Identifying Bottlenecks

When monitoring, look for these signs:

GPU utilization at ninety-seven-a hundred: Your GPU is the proscribing aspect (maximum not unusual with ray tracing)

CPU cores at excessive utilization: Potential CPU bottleneck

High VRAM utilization: You may need to lessen texture pleasant or decision

Thermal throttling: Components lowering overall performance due to high temperatures

Overclocking Considerations

Carefully implemented overclocking can help with ray tracing performance:

GPU middle and reminiscence overclocking can provide five-15% overall performance upgrades

Improved cooling is important for maintaining overclocked overall performance

Undervolting can sometimes improve overall performance using decreasing thermal throttling

I do not forget struggling with a specific ray tracing-heavy sport until I realized my GPU turned into thermal throttling. After improving my case airflow and growing a custom fan curve, my performance stepped forward by almost 20% without changing any game settings.

Reddit-Approved Ray Tracing Tweaks

The gaming community on Reddit has ended up being a superb aid for ray tracing optimizations. Here are a number of the simplest tweaks I've gathered from various subreddits:

From r/nvidia:

"RT shadows are frequently the least major RT impact. Turning them off whilst preserving RT reflections can provide you with again 10-15 FPS with minimum visible impact."

"DLSS Frame Generation (DLSS 3.0+) is a game-changer for ray tracing performance on supported playing cards."

"If you are CPU constrained, enabling 'NVIDIA Reflex' can assist lessen system latency and clean out frame pacing."

From r/AMDHelp:

"FSR 3. Zero with Frame Generation enabled works noticeably nicely with ray tracing on RDNA 3 playing cards."

"Ray traced shadows at low first-class regularly look better than traditional shadow techniques at the same time as performing higher than extraordinary RT shadows."

From r/pcmasterrace:

"Custom decision scaling: Set your render decision to 85-90% and compensate with polishing filters for a performance enhance that's difficult to observe visually."

"For video games that help each DLSS/FSR and ray tracing, usually allow the upscaling generation first, then upload ray tracing outcomes one at a time until you locate your performance candy spot."

One in particular beneficial Reddit tip stored my gaming enjoy in Control. A user recommended simplest allowing ray-traced reflections while leaving the other RT consequences off, then using DLSS Performance mode. This aggregate gave me ninety% of the visible wow element with approximately 40% higher performance than complete RT.

Future-Proofing Your Ray Tracing Setup

As the ray tracing era keeps adapting, here are some considerations for future-proofing your setup:

Hardware Considerations

When upgrading, prioritize GPUs with robust ray-tracing acceleration

Consider the VRAM ability—ray tracing frequently calls for greater memory

Don't neglect CPU enhancements, as games have become increasingly more multi-threaded

Software Evolution

Keep an eye fixed on new variations of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS

Watch for improvements in r raytracing culling strategies

Stay updated on new motive force optimizations specifically for ray tracing

A developer pal who works on rendering technologies informed me some thing interesting: "The destiny of ray tracing is not pretty much raw GPU energy—it is about smarter algorithms that may get more visual exceptional from fewer rays. The r raytracing culling radius and comparable strategies will become increasingly more sophisticated."

Conclusion

Optimizing your gaming PC for ray tracing is both an art and a science. It requires expertise in the generation, having the proper hardware, applying appropriate software program settings, and constantly first-rate-tuning your setup.

Remember that an appropriate stability between visual nice and performance is rather non-public. Some game enthusiasts prioritize rock-stable framerates, at the same time as others are willing to just accept occasional dips beneath 60 FPS to experience the maximum sensible lighting fixtures and reflections feasible.

By applying the strategies included in this guide, from basic driving force updates to superior ray tracing optimizations and r raytracing culling issues, you will be properly prepared to get the most out of this progressive rendering era.

The next time you boot up a recreation with ray tracing enabled, take a moment to realise just how a long way gaming pictures have come—and understand that with the proper optimizations, you are experiencing them at their best.

Have you found another effective techniques for improving ray tracing overall performance? Share your stories and keep the discussion—after all, the gaming network prospers while we share our know-how.

[coolpuppy12]

Introducing the Doo Doo Save File - Version One!

Disclaimer:

This save is still very much a work in progress. While most things appear to be complete (such as builds), there's still a lot to be done. So, keep that in mind. Also, I tried my best to playtest everything, but this is a HUGE save. So, it's possible I missed things. If I did, feel free to let me know!

TOU:

Please don't claim as your own. Don't reupload my builds as your own. Basically, don't be weird. Just give credit please as this took centuries to do lol.

Special Thanks!

EDIT: Ahhh! Big thank you to @lasabarcassims for helping me set up SimFileShare! Please check out their save as well. It’s amaaaazing.

Shout out to @aaliyahnavI @doit4thesims @forever-lbsims @senselesssims for playtesting this monstrosity. I greatly appreciate you all!

Thanks to @simmerapple (gallery: ImpossibleBelle) and @simkuza (Gallery: Mimilagu) for checking out the save and sending some of their amazing sims to use!

Lastly, I want to thank everyone for their continued support and encouragement! When I started this thing, I was just bored and looking for a way to improve my game. I honestly did not expect to finish it, nor did I expect so many of you to care lol. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's still very rough around the edges, but I hope it brings you some enjoyment!

Also, don't hesitate to tag me in any posts! I want to see my precious Doo Doo brought to life!

Doo Doo V1 (with rentals - updated): download here!

Alt. DL here!

Doo Doo V1 (without rentals - outdated): download here!

Alt. DL here!

MORE INFO AND SCREENSHOTS BELOW:

Here is an overview of everything:

16 worlds redone (Mt. Komorebi, Sulani, Selvadorada, and Tomarang still need some TLC)

Some updated townies with lore, relationships, jobs, etc. etc.

New townies!

New clubs and holidays

LOTS of packs used, so not BG friendly

For Version 2, I hope to finish this save completely. When will that be? That's a good question lol

What's not included:

All the packs - I don't own (and probably never will lol) HSY, Werewolves, Lovestruck, and MWS. Also missing most of the kits.

Specialty lots (i.e. police station, magic realm) won't be touched until Ver. 2

CC, Mods, and Tips

If you want the townies’ relationships to stay intact, I HIGHLY recommend downloading MCCC. If not, you shouldn’t have any issues playing the save, but some relationships will eventually be deleted due to the culling system. Instructions here!

I did use one piece of CC, but it is absolutely not required in order to download this save. It's the Modern Family Portrait by RAVASHEEN! Download only if you want some cute portraits of the families.

For this save, I grouped some of the worlds together. You don't have to play this way, it's just a note to consider:

Oasis Springs, Del Sol Valley, and StrangerVille

Newcrest, Willow Creek, and Magnolia Promenade

Windenburg, Forgotten Hallow, Glimmerbrook, and Henford

San Myshuno, Brindleton Bay

San Sequoia and Evergreen Harbor

The other worlds? They're just on their own for now.

PHOTOS!

[yeyinde]

baby blues

John Price + the panic of fatherhood x reader

pregnancy. babies. soft. sappy. angsty. slight allusions to rough sex. John being possessive and smitten. allusions to childhood trauma. the fear of children is somehow more potent than the fear of god. girl dad John. mentions of Price's divorce lmao

Most assume he'd take to fatherhood like he'd been born for the role; handcrafted to cradle a swaddled babe in his arms. The perfect father figure. But as he hovers over your sleeping form, the little bundle nestled in the sleepy bracket of your arms, he's overcome with a sense of dread that punches hard enough to shatter bone.

The reality is this: Price doesn't understand kids. He wants them. Covets them with a viciousness that almost immediately sets alarm bells off in the heads of those who were opposed to the idea of children, parenthood. Giving birth. But when it comes to being a dad, a role model, an effigy to siphon wisdom and knowledge off of, he flounders. Hesitates.

All he has as an idea of fatherhood is bruises laughed off by the neighbours as him being a clumsy boy. A man who drank in the living room, silent in his fury, his belligerence, until something—anything, really—set him off. He always seemed like he was itching for a reason to punish.

And god, was he ever fucking good at it.

If anger issues are hereditary, then Price picked up the generational slack of his seething ancestors. 

It's this, and the plethora of scars and burns that decorate his skin (well hidden, tucked away like a dirty secret because if Old Man Price was anything, it certainly wasn't stupid; he knows how to hide the ugliness of himself away, and how to turn a boy into a punching bag without causing too much damage, too much alarm) that make him ache something fierce when he sees his chubby little child for the first time. 

Price doesn't know how to be gentle. All he has are worn, rough hands and a constant stench of smoke. A voice that makes grown men tremble. An ire unmatched thus far in his life. 

Until you. Little spitfire. His hellion. You stood on the tips of your toes just to tell him off for being a stubborn pig! and then taught him how to hold you. How to be tender. But even now, he can see the wear on your skin from his bites. His propensity for violence that he morphs into desire. Into lust. 

How is he supposed to be a dad when he's this caustic? This mean? 

The answer doesn't come. All he gets is the rhythmic sigh of your breath as you sleep, well and truly exhausted after giving birth to their child. All alone. A constant in your lives, it seems. Aloneness. His work takes him away, throws him into dangerous situations. And you carry the brunt of it. 

It caused the rupture of his first marriage and is a needling fear he carried with him when you started pursuing him some odd years ago. To think that he'd be standing here now, gazing down at you with your heavy eyes and your soft cheeks, rounded with the additional weight you gained during your early trimesters. A plushness he's trying to keep on you for good—all softened edges, flesh that gives when he touches you, marshmallows out between his fingers when he squeezes.

You look good like this. Motherhood, despite your misgivings (it took three years of him hinting and hounding you before you'd relented with a sure, what's the worst that could happen? We're terrible parents and raise a terrible kid? Or we end up the catalyst for a list of psychological issues and get reamed out during their therapy sessions later on in life?), suits you. Fits you like a glove.

A fact you'd been quietly overwhelmed by in the first few months, grieving the loss of something he couldn't ever understand, or experience. A piece of yourself morphing into the mother that raised you. A kaleidoscope of feelings that you choke on when he asks, unable to render them into coherent words. 

But you're good at that, aren't you? Good at culling expectations, at superseding the limits others place on you. Even him. 

Especially him. 

When he'd said, don't know what you're gettin’ yourself into, love, you took it to the chin like he challenged you to a brawl, and set out to show him why you knew what this was, what he was, and why it didn't matter much. 

Even now—

Giving birth all alone. Overcoming the isolation of being shackled to a man who married his post first. Sisterwife to his career. Second in all things. 

Even this. 

He was in Iceland when he got the call. Laswell, of all people, was on the other line telling him his own wife was in the delivery room. Water broke. Baby is on the way. 

And you—

Don't worry, old man. Just do what needs to be done and we'll be waiting. Always. 

—well. You certainly are. Alone in a hospital room with the curtains drawn to blot out the sun as you sleep, cradling this thing he made with his fingers shoved deep into your mouth, uttering foul under his breath as he crushed you to the bed, rutting you like an animal—the most tender he could ever be—and he's suddenly all too aware of his own inadequacies. His shortcomings. Failures. 

He's not a dad. He's not the sort of man people think about when they think healthy father figure. He likes cigars and whiskey, and sometimes aches for a mission that will let him cut his knuckles on teeth—bloodletting; exorcising his demons out on the people he's sanctioned to kill. How is he supposed to guide a child when he threw a man over a railing without a second thought—

The bundle stirs. Wrinkled, red face scrunching up tight. Little thing is just like you, huh? All softness and give. All—

They cry, and it's shrill. Loud. It jars him.

Not the sound, but the anguish he feels piercing through his chest as they bellow out their confusion to the world, this lost little thing. Strapped with a father who was beaten black and blue and told to be a man when he cried. 

But right now—anger is the furthest thing on his mind. He can't fathom that emotion when his child is whimpering in your arms, chubby little fingers grasping at the air. Seeking comfort. 

Waking you feels cruel when you've spent the better part of two days awake. Four, really. You couldn't sleep when the contractions hit, wide-eyed and worried about everything. What if something went wrong? If they hated you? What if you hurt them—

Worries he tried to assuage, but couldn't deny he felt them, too. 

All he knows how to do is hurt. But as he reaches down for this little thing squirming in your arms, he tells himself to be tender. To be the man his dad never was. 

And they're soft. So fuckin’ soft. Tiny, too. His hands dwarf them, engulfing them completely. He tries to blame the way he trembles on the denial of nicotine for so long, but the mist in his eyes, and the burn in his throat, call him a liar. He doesn't know what to do. Even with all the hours spent thumbing through manuals and books and scoffing under his breath at the parenting courses you dragged him to (but paid rigid attention to every word the heavily bangled woman said to him), he feels lost. Unsure. The ground is shaky. Control slips. And that's maybe the crux of it all—

Babies can't be controlled. And it's the loss of this, what makes him whole, keeps him steady, that has him feeling rubber-limbed and fawn-like. 

“Quiet, now,” he murmurs, and then winces at the rough drag of his voice in the silence of the room. Too firm, too forceful. All the gentleness he has in his bones was devoured by your greedy mouth when you cracked him open like the legs of a snow crab, marrow slurped up until he was hollow. Empty. His tenderness rests inside your belly. What else does he have to give—

But the warm bundle in his awkward, clumsy hold stops their shrill cries. A girl, he remembers you saying. Crying. Sobbing into the phone when he called, all ugly and gross. He heard you sniffle, snot undoubtedly dribbling from your nose as you wept to him about how fucking cute their baby was. Their little girl. 

She's soft. Smells of a newborn, too—something powdery. Sweet. Warmed milk, fresh bread. The clinical books that made you squeamish, the ones that outlined every anatomical and chemical change to your body, mentioned that newborns smelled distinct to each parent. A phenomenon meant to encourage protection and bonding. 

It made you shiver, muttering my little parasite under your breath, even as your hand curved possessively over your bulging belly. 

He knows that's what this is. Chemical. His mind is evolving, shifting. Changing. And it's then that he feels something hot thicken in his throat. Something ugly, and bitter. The scars on his knuckles, the cigarette burns on his fingers are a sharp reminder of what his father felt and ignored. 

He scoffs, then, irritated at himself. He's a grown man and still—

Still thinks of him. 

“Won't be like that,” he says, still rough. Still firm. She blinks up at him, eyes rheumy and wide. “Not with you.” 

Never. Never. He pins the word to his pericardium, letting it rot his tissue. He'd rather die, he thinks, than ever hurt this little girl. But despite that, he knows he will. Inevitably. Just like he does everything good—or bad—in his life. Leaching from the goodness of others, sucking them dry and letting them moulder. A disappointment everywhere except the battlefield where he screams himself hollow and rents the air with his ire. Incorrigible. Immovable. An object of cruelty. Unforgiving in all aspects. A curse that follows him home, into his marital bed when he pins you down, and makes you profess your love for the beast inside of him. Never satiated, never quelled, until you're shackled at his side. Tucked away from the world he knows is too cruel to people like you who end up a corpse he has to step over on his way for empty retribution. 

He thinks, too, about all the ways he's going to ruin this chubby little thing in his arms, and wishes, suddenly, he was a better man. 

“Gonna hate my fuckin' guts when you're sixteen, aren't you?” In response, this little thing just opens its red maw and blows bubbles. He huffs. “You're gonna be nothin’ but trouble, mm? Steal my car. Crash it because your mum's gonna teach you how to drive and she backed into the garage six times already. Gonna gang up on me. Both of you. Little nightmares.” 

He's not sure what else to say, and thinks, already, that he said too much. Bared his belly to her too soon. She'll have this memory, buried down in the deep recesses of her psyche of her father falling to pieces while he held her. An impossibility, he knows, but can't shake the feeling that this, in itself, is an epoch. A marker for what's to come. All the ugly, the hate. The screaming matches that make him curl his hand into fists as she levels his failures at him. Not to hit. Never to hit. But to stop the tremble that won't stop. That has already started. The shake in his joints that tell him to run before he hurts. Before he ruins this precious mass of his blood and your tissue in his arms. 

“Gonna—” he isn't crying. Isn't. But there's a thickness in his throat as he thinks about how quickly she'll grow up. Age marked in the crows feet that gather around your eyes. The laugh lines. “Gonna be a fuckin' menace, and I'll—” he chokes, then, when she reaches up with a pudgy, red fist and snags the strap of his vest he didn't even bother taking off before he fled here. Fat, tiny fingers curling into the spot he grabs to ground himself from lashing out. “Fuck.”

He'd burn the world for her, he knows. Sacrifice everyone and everything just to keep her warm. Both of you. It begins and ends with this little thing that has your eyes and his nose. 

But he doesn't know how to translate that into love. Into affection. 

It comes out caustic. Abrasive. Possessive. 

And he is. 

Now that he has her in his hands he knows that nothing else will ever compare. That they'll never be empty because she'll always fit in his palms no matter how big she gets. There's only ever been enough space in his heart for you. Chiselled into with a fuckin’ pickaxe because you wouldn't wait for it to grow on its own. 

But there's give, he realises. This domicile you carved yourself has a room attached. A place for her. And she fits like a glove. Sliding inside. Cocooned against his pulse. 

He loves her. Endlessly. Forever. She deserves better. More. 

But when he tells her this, she makes a noise and it sounds like a giggle. 

“Laughin’ at me already, mm?”

She giggles again, and he likes that her laugh is a little ugly. A little mean. 

“Scarin’ the wits outta me,” he confesses, shifting her weight as she occupies herself with the clasp of his vest, disinterested in the man that breaks into pieces around her now. “I don't know—fuck, I don't—”

You come to in a panic. It starts as a slow roll to the side before your eyes flash open, wide and furious even as sleep congeals in the corners, pawing at the empty spot where the lingering warmth of your child presses into your chest. Anger, fury, darkens over your brow, and the apoplectic rage that simmers in the gaps of your dread, your fostering panic, softens him. Makes him melt. The burn of your ire, your fear, liquifying his bones. 

He falls in love with you a little bit more at that moment. When the snarl rucks your upper lip up, up, teeth bared to the world as you whip your head around in frantic, desperate dismay, searching for the little girl he knows you, too, will burn the world for. 

“I've got her,” he says, whisper-soft and low. Cadence even, clear. Tries to quell the howl he can see hammering its fists against your throat before it rips from your lips and scorches the world around you in a hail of horrifying anguish. “She's safe.”

It says something when you immediately go still at the sound of his voice, muscles going lax, slack, as you slowly turn your head toward him, blinking against the fog clotting your vision. Something that cuts him to the core. Rents his chest in halves. One side for you, and the other for her. Nothing left to spare. 

This feeling brimming in his chest sweetens when you startle at the sight of him, them, lashes shuttering like an old camera as if you were trying to sear the image in your head forever. Branded on the back of your eyelids. (A sentiment he knows all too well considering the stream of photos added to his camera roll of you and her nuzzled together.)

“You—” your voice catches, breaks from sleep. Fatigue. You swallow, slowly licking your lips. “When did you get in?”

Your eyes are glued to them. Unblinking. Widened with pure affection, the intensity of which makes him want to touch you, hold you.

“A few hours ago,” he murmurs, glancing down at his—

It cuts a jagged line through his chest. Knicks his bone with how deep it goes. False starts pressed tight to his heart. 

—his daughter. Fuck’s sake. 

He's choked. Strangled. Rendered mute, immobilised. It guts him, this. Daughter. The ring of it echoes in his head, filling the recesses of his mind. Embedding itself within his head. Congealed over. Fixed in place. 

“I have a fuckin’ daughter,” he breathes at length, the air knocked from his lungs. He's not sure why this is what breaks him, but it does. And it's you, then, holding the fracturing pieces together, hands reaching out—in a startling mimicry of his daughter, and fuck, doesn't that just eviscerate him—and curling against the heaving brackets of his ribs, boxing him in. 

“John,” you say, but your voice wobbles. Wavers. When he peels his eyes away from the sleepy yawn she lets out long enough to look at you, there's tears flooding your lashline. Threatening to break. “Fuck,” you say, crass and beautiful, and he's overcome with the urge to tuck you into his other arm, keep you both cradled in his hands. “Don't make me cry or my stitches will tug.” 

“We've got a daughter,” he says again, just to hear it uttered aloud. We. Yours. His. It messes with him. Bludgeons into his core. “We've—”

“She's beautiful, isn't she?” 

Your words shatter him, but the pinch of your hands on his waist keeps him from buckling. 

“Yeah,” he rasps, voice thick. Ugly. It's mangled in his throat. All fractured and raw. “Just like her mother.”

He shows his affection in the burn of his embrace. In the way he holds you tight, refusing to let go. Keeps his words callous and firm. Soft utterances, declarations of love, tucked away in the sure, greedy way he clings to you in his sleep. Yields to you like no one else. Lets you in. 

And he supposes he ought to say it more often if the way your face crinkles up just like his daughter when she cried, tears spilling over your rounded cheeks. 

“Don't,” you heave, ugly and brittle, and he thinks you're the prettiest thing he'd ever seen in his life. “Don't or I'll rip my stitches—”

He huffs. Nods only once, and then steps toward you. “Do you want—?”

“Keep her for a little while,” you mutter, leaning back into the bed, eyes lidded by fond. So in love with him, the picture they paint, it's almost sickening. “She likes you.”

He snorts. “She's only three hours old. Give her time.” 

You're quiet for a beat. Pensive. Mulling something over. It's never a good thing when you're silent, and the unease that grows in his belly is justified when you heave out a long, tired exhale through your nose. 

The way you look at him is raw. “You're not your father, John.” 

And isn't that just the worst lie he'd ever heard.

He scoffs, then. Shifts his weight, still cradling his daughter tight to his chest. “Mm, 'dunno about that.”

“I do.”

“Jus’—” leave it. Keep going. Keep feeding him lies as he stands here and pretends that he wasn't a horrible bastard for wanting this from you. From taking it. Strapping you with a man who's always, always, one foot out the door—

“No.” You say, soft and sure. “You're not him. I know you're not because you're still here.”

“So was he.” 

You don't acknowledge the interruption. Content, it seems, to rattle off lies and half-truths into the stifling air. Your eyes close, the curve of your lashes leonine. Breathtaking.

“Do you want me to take her?” You ask instead of the multitude of things he can see piling behind your eyes. Some of the ugly. Jagged glass. Others powder soft. 

He shakes his head. “You need your rest,” it's a half-truth. Fatigue clings to you still, swathed in the purpling of your skin. The slow, heavy blinks you take to try and fight the tug of an artificial sleep. 

But the real reason is this:

He's just not ready to let her go. 

Thinks, viciously, suddenly, that if he does, this moment built between them in budding, liquid blue will cease forever. Severed too soon. She'll carry the same resentment in her heart he feels for his own father, and he'll die in a shallow pit thinking about how badly he wanted just a second longer. 

Generational, right? Trickle down hatred. Ancestral rage. It's what your grandma talks about sometimes over tea and fried bread, half disbelieving you brought a white man into her home, and making a show, a facade, of wisdom even though he spotted the how to raise a child notebook she hastily shoved into the kitchen drawer when you arrived. Taking over in place of your own mother, stepping up. And yet—

She just doesn't get it, you said, rubbing your hands over your belly when she steps away after another long-winded conversation about traditions, spirits, and dead languages. Raising a child like yours in a world like this. She's just. I don't know. Ignore her. 

(He doesn't. But you don't have to know that.)

So. He clings to her a little tighter. Holds her a little firmer. Brings her close to his chest and hopes she can hear the echo of his heartbeat and know that this tired, old song is just for her. 

(The heart itself for you—)

And maybe—

Maybe he's not quite ready to see you be a mother. Some perverse part of him is already trembling at the promise of watching you nurture and feed her, the tantalising whisper is enough to make the air in his lungs turn humid, sticky. Tar, you remind him sometimes, having seen the ugly spatter of black in the grainy photos the doctor in Hereford likes to shove at him. Never too late to reverse the damage, John. 

Or maybe he wants you for himself just a moment longer. An hour. A day. When you're still you, shackled and bound to a man who reeks of stale tobacco, and started sneaking cigarettes in the dead of night like some pimply, awkward teenager when you first came to him, cheeks wet and eyes wild, and said:

“John, I'm—”

Pregnant. 

He did it, of course. Put that baby in you. Made it with his teeth buried into your throat and your hips canting up to meet him, taking everything he had to offer. Animal aggression. Nothing tender in the way he chewed you up, made you beg him for it. But still—

Wanting and having are worlds apart, aren't they? 

Faced with it, the consequences of his actions, he's at a standstill. 

You hum, and when your eyes slide open, he feels the mallet against his head. Cracked open. You fossick about until you find what you're looking for. Cheeky fuckin’ thing—

“Fine. Just pull up a chair before you keel over, old man.” 

“M’fine,” he grouses in that voice that serves as a dice roll between making you feel hot or homicidal depending on the mood he catches you in. Muttering something under your breath that sounds like a whispered plea for guidance (“tss, gimme strength.”)

But even with the waspish denial, he's inching closer to the spare chair left in the corner, looping his ankle around the leg to slide it closer. The squeal of rubber on aluminium makes him grimace, eyes darting down to his sleeping girl, nestled in his arms. Her brow pinches in the same way your grandma’s do when she's annoyed by the news. Her bingomates. The way he refuses her offering of burning tobacco and lemongrass whenever he goes away for a while, unable to really commit to this little, broken family that feels more like home than his own ever did. 

(“aint my place,” he says, and she scoffs. 

“fuck, s'matter wit’cha?” is her counter, the harsh line between her brows now perfectly superimposed on his daughter’s face. “tss. ain't yer place, eh. are you tryna piss me off? fuck, you make me mad—”)

He sees that spitting anger in you. Generational, he knows. The same inherited attitude his daughter will inevitably have. The one that singles him out as an outlier. Outnumbered. Three, now, to one—

There's got to be a reason why his chest bubbles, innervated by the thought of a Sunday dinner when she's old enough to watch her grandma make intricate bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and pins with thread and glass beads as you, her mother, cuss at the stove that doesn't burn as hot as it used to, flipping over golden dough in a sizzling pan. 

Orange juice in old cups your grandma kept since the nineties. Something soft playing on the radio. The peeling, waterlogged wallpaper flakes off the wall when you slam the pan down too hard. The way the spill of the sun through the rusting window rents the room in half. Pale yellow and oak. Little orange blossoms in soft pink above the speckled granite countertops. Everything awash in a gossamer of sleepy-eyed affection. 

Just like it is now. But—

He looks down at her, head full of lead. Cotton. 

Complete, maybe. 

“Don't know how to be a dad,” he confesses to you, and thinks of how much easier it is to slam a sledgehammer into a metal door than it is to peel back the veneer sometimes. “Don't want to mess up.” 

“You'll be fine.” 

The crinkle of the plastic mattress, the scratch of the sheets sliding across the bed is louder now than it was before. He cuts the gentle sounds with an abrading hum that clicks off his teeth. 

“Get some sleep,” he says again instead of the awful truth that buoys in his throat. Things like you don't know and I tricked you this whole time into thinking I'm a good man and look what you’ve let me do to you. “You need it.” 

Another noise. In his periphery, he watches you lean back against the upright pillows, lips parted on a soft sigh. He feels—

Small, then. An oxymoron considering he has to duck his head to get in and out of the room, towering over most he meets daily. But the inadequacies gut him. Vivisect him. He should be more comforting to you, he knows. This whole thing has been difficult. Tiresome. Cut into and having the life you grew inside of you cut out—

“Did good,” he rasps, still staring down at her even as he pulls the chair as close to your bed as he can get. “With her.” 

You snort. It's inelegant. Ugly. Brittle, like you're holding back tears. 

When he glances up, he finds that you are. “You're strong,” he adds, and knows he should have started with this first. “Doin’ this all on your own.” 

“I had help.”

It's awkward trying to adjust himself in the seat with his daughter perched in his arms, but he finds a way. Settled, then, with her still sleeping away, he lifts his hand from her back, keeping her cradled in his arm with the other, and reaches for you. 

The starchy sheets catch on the bramble of hair on his knuckles, the back of his hand, and the static jolts tickle against the rough scar tissue thickened over his knuckles, some still fresh, scabbed from the latest mission he'd been deployed to. You watch him, misty-eyed and tremulous, as he draws nearer, eyes flickering like a pendulum between the bundle nestled on the thick of his arm, to him, watching you back. Greedily taking in every spasm, every blink. 

Something inside of him cracks. Softens. He thinks, breathless, that you've never been as beautiful to him as you are right now. Bubbles of snot in your nose. Eyes reddened, dropping from exhaustion. A dizzying mess. The sort that speaks of tireless work, of physicality. Muted pain brimming in the backs of your eyes when you pull on your stitches. 

“Got a pretty wife,” he says, and it's not enough. He knows it isn't. Looks away before the fracture lilt to his tone breaks him in two. “And—” it's hard to say. He forces himself to. “And a beautiful daughter.” 

The tears stream down your face at this quiet, clumsy admission. 

“Don't—” you sniffle, hoarse. “Or I'll tear my stitches.”

“M’not doin' anythin’, love.” 

“Fuck you, John—”

He leans back in his chair with a hum, eyes slipping shut. A brief respite amid the panic still clinging tight to his ribcage. “Love you too.” 

It's quiet. Nothing but the soft drag of each breath his daughter takes, the tremulous sniffle you give as you try to dam the tears sliding down your cheeks. His heart hammering in his ears. He commits it all to memory. Glueing it to the fibrils of mind where it'll stay, embedded in tissue, for as long as he is of sound mind. 

Much like the grainy, black-and-white ultrasounds stuffed in his breast pocket. Tucked inside the drawer of his desk where he keeps the pictures of you. Keepsakes he's unnecessarily possessive over, elbowing the rowdier men who try to needle him for sparse information on the little wife he hides at home and the baby they'll never meet. Something just for him. Unshareable to the rest of the world because they don't deserve you. 

The feathered snores tell him you're finally asleep, and he thinks about resting for a moment as well—the bone-deep exhaustion he feels jetting from Iceland to home, to the hospital catches up to him with a vicious kick to temples—but the weight in his arm keeps him awake. Hyperviligent. 

There's this urge clawing at him, making ruins of his chest, and he answers its worried insistence by opening his eyes just a sliver to stare down at the little bundle in his arms only to find she's staring back at him. Eyes wide. Comically too big for her chubby face. 

She has your complexion, but his dark curls. Her eyes, though, are the perfect equilibrium between pools of sapphire, burnt blue, marbled with the dark gleam, that vibrant shade of yours that he's so fond of, the one that's often accompanied by a smart-ass remark. Seeing it gaze up at him with such incipient adoration knocks the air from his lungs. Has his heart shuddering in the brackets of his chest. 

It's love, he thinks first. Instantaneous. Apodictic. And then, cold, callous—

Chemical. 

Just to hurt himself, maybe. Just to let it cut deep. Scar. Because as he stares down at her, he knows it doesn't matter. No amount of hatred, of anger, will ever rip her away from him. His daughter. His family. His.

Like her mother. The root of it all. The catalyst. The start. 

Shackled to this gaping chasm that devours endlessly, never satiated. Always starving. 

Needy. Full of greed. 

Because even now he covets. Craves. Muses to himself about how he can convince you to have another the moment the opportunity arises and you're healed. Whole. Aching for it. 

He wasn't joking when he said he wanted a football team. 

But for now—

The soft sighs you make in your sleep, ones that almost sound like his name, and the comforting weight of his daughter in his arms are enough to make the beast inside purr. Preening under its own conquest, its own victory of successfully turning your body into a home he can rest his weary head on. Sacrosanct. 

He looks at her, then, and feels the dread ease into pride. Into elation. An emotion he knows should have come first, but it's here now, and that's all that really matters.

“Gonna be trouble,” he grouses, watching her pink mouth gape wide, blood-red maw grinning up at him in delirious glee only babies can imbue. Unhindered by the ruination of the world around them. Unfettered. 

Something he couldn't protect you from, but knows you're both on the same wavelength when it comes to her. At all costs, you'd said, hand against the burgeoning swell. And he kissed you until he couldn't feel his lips anymore. Until all he tasted, all he knew, was the taste of you.

“Of the best kind, though, mm?” 

In response, she coos. And he hews the sound into his chest where it sits beside the brand of when you first said, i love you, too, John. 

So, he relaxes. Whispers soft, conspiratorily. "Think you might need'a brother, mm? What'd you say about that?"

And she giggles.

[tiredmamaissy]

Wandering Hands — Ralak’s POV

Ralak x Reader

Warnings: nsfw, smut, explicit language, let’s not spoil it too much this is only a drabble lol, this is my first time writing a males pov so bear with me 🙈

Hope you enjoy! ❤️

She’s showing me her pussy again, subtly, but definitely.

Definitely presenting.

No. She’s not. I’m harsh with my reminder. She’s doing the washing. Hanging our pieces to dry. I look away and clench my jaw so it isn’t obvious how she’s making me feel.

What kind of man would I be if I drooled at the mere sight of her reaching down for whatever flimsy cloth is in that damn bucket? Not one of honour.

I have control. I am in control.

I drag the whetstone against my spear, it’s my third time sharpening it today. Ridiculous, I know. But if I don’t keep my hands busy, they itch to wander.

I sneak another glance, she’s on the tips of her five toes now, pinning up one of her tops. Her tail curls and brushes against her thigh and…

I look away. Again. A man of honour and respect. I huff a sigh, bite my tongue a little. My rut is nowhere near yet she makes it feel like it’s on the cusp of showing his wicked face.

Like I might lose control and allow him to do whatever he wants with her little, fragile body. My cock bobs at the thought. He agrees with my merciless shadow. The man that consumes me every few moons.

My nostrils flare as I fight the burn of me reigning myself in and I drag the whetstone against my blade a final time. Abandoning my spear in the sand, I stalk over to the fishing net.

My hands itch. But I don’t allow them to wander.

Instead, they grip the twine and I drag my feet towards the shore and in the water. I toss the net to catch tonight’s dinner.

That’s what a man of honour does, provide for what is his. The easy task is over before it starts, and I catch enough for tomorrow’s dinner. Good, more time to spend with my mate.

My chest grows with pride, but I quickly shove it down and throw the net over my shoulder with the writhing fish inside. I give a quiet, short thanks to Ewya as I saunter back to shore to cull her sacrifice with my knife.

I peek over at my tanhi as the sudden need to ensure her safety overwhelms me. Relief floods me when I see that she’s sitting on the overturned bucket braiding her hair. Good. That’s what she should be doing, relaxing.

I look down, making quick time in preparing our dinner. The itch is growing quite bothersome. My eyes dart over against my volition, she’s still fiddling with her hair. Good. She’s safe. I force myself to calm down, and focus on the task. Focus.

The fish are clean and boneless. I don’t need her to worry about bones, she’s still not used to them like we reef people are. I toss them in a basket and make my way to the pit. I’m considerably closer to her now and her sharp, pungent scent that wafts over is evidence of that.

Her heat is coming.

Focus. I bite my tongue again, and turn my attention to the charred coal. I need to light this fire. That’s what I need to do.

Yet my eyes wander again, and she’s looking at me. My chest tightens, but I hold her gaze. Her eyes are so soft. I don’t know how else to describe it. I didn’t know eyes could be soft. She’s so delicate, like if I look at her the wrong way she’d break. So I don’t. I don’t let anything come through my face of stone.

She lets her lips curve into a wobbly smile, and my heart leaps but my mouth tightens. She stands and hesitates, likely to make her way over here or not. My instinct says she will. She does.

Little by little, she toddles down the shore towards me. I swallow. Her scent grows stronger, it's thick and practically trailing behind her. Thank Eywa my marui is secluded.

I stiffen, both my body and what’s in my tewng.

“Mate.” I speak the first word as she settles herself on my thigh.

Eywa, give me the strength.

“Ralak.” She whispers, shuffling until she makes herself comfortable in front of me. Forget about lighting this pit. “What are you up to?”

I can’t even remember. Her pussy is hot against my thigh, and notably swollen. My cock throbs. This woman is trouble. I send another silent prayer to Eywa.

“Dinner. Hungry?” I keep it short, I have to.

She nods and bats her thick lashes at me, staring into my soul with her golden eyes. My heart stammers. My hands itch to wander.

Start the fire.

But she’s on my thigh, blocking my view—my path. How could I ever move her out the way?

Lift her up. She weighs nothing.

She can sit here as long as she pleases, it’s her thigh to do what she wants with. Whatever she wants with. I feel my hands mindlessly rest on her hips.

Start the damn fire.

Great, now I am officially a mad man, having arguments with myself in my head.

“Mm.” I let out a nonchalant grunt and allow one corner of my mouth to twitch into something of a smile. “Then I must start this fire. Need you fed.”

She smiles up at me, her canines beaming white. I glance down to see my fingertips sink into her soft, supple skin. I’m clearly not letting her go anywhere.

Her breath is heavy, and so is her chest. Great mother, her breasts look as if they ache, and her nipples are like smooth pebbles in her top. My cock jumps.

She’s almost in heat.

I know. I should have caught more fish.

“Are you telling me to get off, karyu?” She giggles, innocently dragging her plump pussy along my thigh, pretending to get up.

My hands clamp down before I even give them the command, and I immediately loosen my grip when I’m back in control. She knows what that name does to me.

“Never.” I growl, taking an intentional breath to keep myself together.

“Good.” She breathes, happily settling herself back down on top of me, shoving her pussy a little closer to my groin.

I groan a little and feel myself tense even more. At this rate, my cock is going to tear through my tewng and skewer her like a spear.

I feel her lips drag across my jaw and she peppers a few kisses on my chin. She’s teasing me and she knows it.

“What are you up to, mate?” I ask her the question she asked me, even though we both know the answer.

“Nothing.” She says in her sweet, innocent voice as she lays her head against my chest. “Just relaxing, enjoying the moment.”

Ilushit.

“That so, tanhi?” I mutter into her newly-braided, lush hair. It smells as sweet as her scent.

Heat.

My instincts ride me. Alerting me it’s near yet again. It’s almost on her now. Maybe it’ll be sooner than I thought. Tonight, perhaps.

I really should have caught more fish.

The urge to fatten her up strikes me. I need to get her fed and ready for the next few days.

“You need food, tiyawn.” I force myself to unwrench my fingers from her hips.

“A little later.” She mumbles into my chest, nuzzling her face into me. She’s slurring her words a little.

We don’t have ‘later’.

“No, now.” I affirm, leaning back to look at her face. She whines like a child and snuggles further into me, inhaling deeply. She’s scenting me.

There is definitely no ‘later’.

“Come now, tanhi. You need to eat.” I’m stern with my tone, and I’m certain she’s pouting against my chest now. I want to give her anything she desires. “I will be quick.”

She’s still not convinced, and begins wiggling on my thigh. Great mother, please. She’s rubbing against me with no rhythm, inexperienced and innocent. My tewng is too damn tight.

Her whine fades into a whimper and my ears pin back.

I can’t take it, she knows how to get what she wants. I’m certain if I allow it she’d take my cock right here, by the pit. She’s in no sound mind now, her scent is almost suffocating.

I let out a sigh of defeat and shift to the side, getting the fire started single handedly. It sparks to life with a whoosh. I haphazardly shove the fish on a skewer and set it over the flame.

Her movements grow even needier, and her thin fingers wrap around my chest piece for purchase. Good. She can use me how she pleases.

My thigh is getting warm and slippery, her slick is most certainly soaking through her tewng.

Fuck.

I will myself not to look. If I do, I might lose it and fuck her here. I won’t. I flip the fish and let the other side cook until it’s white inside. I continue to support her with my other hand and let my fingers clutch her waist as she squirms against me. She’s clearly in need.

And what kind of a man would I be if I stopped her?

“Get it out, then.” I encourage her gruffly, widening my stance to give her the space to hump at my thigh.

She hides her face in my chest as her hips work overtime, rutting and thrusting into me. Her slick dribbles down the sides of my thigh and my cock is about to burst. I swear, I’m going to explode.

“That’s it.” I mutter under my breath, desperately trying not to cum in my tewng. I distract myself and cook the second half of the fish, but almost burn them because of her sweet, sweet sounds.

“L-Lak…” She moans my name through a tremble as her clit pulses on my thigh. She’s about to cum and make a delicious, little mess on me. I can’t wait. My heart is about to fly out of my chest.

“Say it, numeyu.” I can barely breathe, much less find the words. I yank the semi-charred skewer off the flame and focus solely on her.

“I—” She peeks up from my chest, glossy eyed and tensed brows.

Both my hands grip her with intent, following and encouraging her every thrust as I lock my gaze with hers. I want her to cum on me while she looks me in the eye. I want to see her face melt into pleasure when her pussy flutters on my skin.

“I’m cumming.” She whispers her admission as a tear slips down her cheek.

Oh.

My cock aches. It’s twitching and weeping in my tewng and I can’t help it when my hips buck so I can rub against something. Her brows tense some more and then relax and her lips tremble. Her sweet voice shatters and then I feel it.

Her pussy is throbbing against my thigh. She cumming on me.

“Mmph. Good girl.” I growl a little too loudly for my liking, but I need to reward her.

My hands keep her still so I can feel every second of it, and my hips stutter against her. I want to cum too, inside of her as she looks at me like that again. But I have plenty of time for that, because…

She’s in heat.

She grows weak against me, and her eyelids flutter. I bounce my thigh a bit to jolt her awake, and remind her it’s dinner time. She giggles light heartedly and smiles like a skxawng. She knows what she does to me. She’s trouble.

My trouble.

[revelboo]

Not a request. Just wanted you to know that your TFP Shockwave fic reminds me of the song Nothing by Emilie Autumn.

It's about a Victorian Doctor who experiments on the women in his asylum but gets attached and obsessed with one. I thought you might like it. Love your work as always and I hope you are taking care of yourself. Happy Holidays 💜

Ooh that’s delightfully unsettling. He definitely has an obsession growing

Thundercracker is next up if I don’t get too busy.

Point Of Extinction Pt 8

TFP Shockwave x Reader

• Head lowering, he watches you eat and his servos flex. Wanting to reach out as illogical as it is, wanting to find comfort in the warmth of you. To chase those daydreams of another life, another self that nag at him more insistently every day. Like the answers are right there, he just doesn’t know how to get to them. Because in those memories, there are answers that he needs. As confusing as you. Your emotions so mercurial he has trouble understanding them, but he wants to. Like this. Asking him if he’d like to share a meal even though neither of you can consume the other’s fuel. He doesn’t understand it, but he’d still agreed. Sipping his energon as his antenna flick every time you move where you’re sitting on his desk.

• You’re not sure why you’d bothered to ask him to eat with you except that he’d seemed more agitated than usual. Armor plating panels flared slightly to make you think of an upset cockatiel. Something you’re never admitting to him. And sitting with you, he’d calmed some. “Want to talk about it?” You ask, fidgeting as that single optic washes you in its red glow when he tips his head toward you. You don’t find him terrifying all the time anymore after what he’s done to the deer, but you can’t forget it either. It haunts your sleep sometimes, dreaming that you’re the one on the gurney. He’s not safe and he’s a bit unsettling even when you don’t think he’s trying to be, but you don’t think he wants to hurt you. But you could just be lying to yourself. “About whatever you were upset about?” You add since he’s still staring, antenna lowering.

• Why do you want to know? Looking for weakness to exploit? Head tipping as he tries to figure out your motivation, your shoulders hunch and you turn your attention back to your food with a mumbled ��never mind.’ Or are you genuinely concerned about him? End of his cannon tapping gently against his thigh, he reaches to hook a servo around your middle and pull you around to face him, hearing your sharp inhale. “My experiments keep failing. They die.” And he can’t understand why. Something about organic life fighting being terraformed. Being fixed.

• Considering you’re also an experiment, that’s not exactly what you want to hear. He’s not hurt you, though. Still scans you regularly and makes notes, but whatever he’s subjecting his other lab animals to, you’ve been spared so far. You just don’t know why he saved you. “What exactly are you trying to do?” Because you don’t want it to be only that he’s that callous. That this is all for nothing other than macabre curiosity. There has to be a reason. Otherwise this is all just madness, barely leashed violence masquerading as science.

• Servos brushing your side, hooking against your neck to tilt your chin up, you catch at his servos with those little, soft hands. Frightened again even though he’s not trying to startle you. “Recreate home,” he says and your eyes widen. Can you understand how important this is? Or is it as elusive to you as understanding why he’d culled you from his experiments? Because sometimes he thinks the answer to unraveling his past lies in you. He’s just not sure if the only way to get to it is to take you apart piece by piece.

Previous

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[1800titz]

The vacay piece I teased ages ago. One night stand :D

CONTENT/WARNINGS: p-in-v, oral, brief size kink (if you squint), praise kink, this one’s p vanilla.

WC: 2.5K

It starts like this:

A bohemian beach with a high riding tide, where ripples surge and flood the shore. Sand tears from its home, coasting the verge in the breeze like a fog under the overcast, and when the clouds split open, the rays hug her skin. 

She’s sprawled over a chaise lounge in a little red thing that’s all skimp and no cover besides the intimates. When she rolls onto her side and tips to her tummy, he eyes the flash of skin behind dark tint. His arms brace over the porcelain border of the pool that overlooks the beach up ahead — he’s watchful from a distance. Someone swims up to the bar behind him. Chlorine laps at his back, teeming over the grout between the tiles as he wraps his lips over a straw and nurses something cobalt and strong.

By the time he culls a second one, she’s up, all glistening skin in the sunshine, hips swaying as her toes make doughy prints in the sand. She trails to the sea, and the ocean eats her until she’s just a little silhouette in front of his sunglasses with water-slicked hair and lines that cinch and swell in all the right places. 

He sees her like that, outlying his bubble, in brief pieces like the flashes of skin. Fragments in the horizon, like the border of a stranger’s leg in the background of a photograph. He sees her in slivers where eyes interlock from across the room and linger. This bohemian summer is painted in teal, and it’s waves swathing the coast, warm skin coated in cocoa butter. 

It ends on a night where the teal metamorphose indigo, and then nearly denim, with orange on cords, glinting like miniaturized, splintered orbs of the sun have been caught to glare forever on strings in the night. Harry sees her through that indigo, this stranger’s bare leg waltzing in the depths of his touristy snapshot, mingling in the dancing horde. He trails closer, shouldering through the throng and squeezing through in polite gaps, and she twists like it’s fate — just enough to smuggle a glimpse in her peripherals. 

Eventually, Harry leans in to murmur, “What are you drinking?”

The plush of his mouth ghosts over the cartilage there, and his cadence smooths over like honey, low and deep over the pounding bass of the music. Waned tobacco and spice; a warm, pleasant musk in the flurry of scents. 

She doesn’t immediately respond, observant like she’s weighing whether the invitation is worth entertaining. It only takes a second. Then, there’s a hand over his pec, like she’s already made friends with the filth of his intentions. His red-lycra-skimp mystique rolls up on her toes. 

Harry twists his head just enough for her to respond, “It’s a Blue Lagoon.” 

Saccharine — rich and lux and smooth, something that has her skin glowy and sweeps up her throat, tucks behind her ear, enough so that the scent billows off with the motion of her hair as she flips it over her shoulder. 

Harry casts his gaze to the drink. A red straw is tucked into the ice, and the only remnants of the beverage mingle at the bottom. The ice shimmers in faded teal, much like water sloshing over the flat tides. Her fingers cradle over the cup, and that’s where soft, thin lines of gold coil. Despite the broad array, there’s no wedding band. 

“Can I grab you another?” 

That’s when she does the thing; this patently flirtatious, brazenly get-under-my-crocheted-midi-skirt sort of thing, lashes coy in their sweep and eyes innocuous as the tips of her manicured fingers pinch at the straw and siphon it to her mouth. There’s an elegant presentation to the polish — neat, short lines with a nude base and a white tip. 

The remnants of the beverage vanish until all that’s left is crushed ice painted with blue curaçao. Harry watches the straw. He watches her lips, the way they unlatch and the way the pink tip of her tongue offers a glimpse before it hides away behind her front teeth. 

When she pulls the drink away, she tips her head — an inclination for his ear again — and when he ducks his chin for her answer, she tells him, “Can you make it worth my time?” 

A tongue swipes — his — like it’s already hungry and yearning. Dimples form beside the curling edges of a mouth after the pink muscle retreats. Home in its hungry cavern; limitlessly craving. He doesn’t bother going for her ear again, instead opting to fix eyes that have wandered, all week, onto her face. Definitive, close. Mesh of saccharine and spice. 

“I’ll make it worth your time,” Harry assures. 

His eyes are virid, even in the indigo, under all the miniature suns as the lanterns throw them back into a roll of blue — it climbs over the crowd and seeps with the music. They’re virid and intent. They’re virid, and there’s something lewd that dances in the mottled talc. 

She watches him. A set of eyes flits to his mouth and stays, brief like a fragment. She nudges the cup — the fragment splinters and fades — extending it against his chest until he raises his hand and his ring clad digits curl over it slowly, wet with condensation. 

“Blue Lagoon,” sweet mystique reminds him, a little curl to her mouth. 

Harry heads to the bar. He orders a Blue Lagoon and refreshes his tequila. Double. He winds through the half-clad crowd, prodding and slipping through sweat-slicked bodies until he finds her again. 

He makes it worth her while when they’re dancing, when her arms are slung over his shoulders and the tips of her fingers graze at the little curls at his nape, like an intimacy beyond a summer fling, or maybe like a restless hunger — its touches only test the waters with dips of toes under lapping ripples. He makes it worth her while when his hand cups the meat of her hip, and she tips her head up for their mouths to meet, when their dancing slows and the kiss turns feverish, cushiony mouths teasing at the seams until they split. 

He makes it worth her time when they make the stroll back to his room, heels clicking over tile and bouncing off from lofty wall to lofty wall, a good bit of distance between them strictly for the sake of avoiding shagging in the middle of a hallway. He makes it worth her while when he braces his wrist band to the lock over the door, when she’s leant against the wall with her irises lingering on him and her lashes batting coyly. She’s well-behaved, hands tucked behind her back like a combat to handsy temptation. 

It’s a different story behind the door. 

He makes it worth her while when her fingers toy at her crocheted halter, index perusing at the fabric below cleavage and brushing over chalky yarn. He makes it worth her time when he steps into her space all slow-like, face tipped down and the pink below his cupid’s bow worked into a soft curve, lengthy, deft digits working over the buttons of his shirt. An untamed tendril teases over one of his brows. Her hands meander from fondling at her own tits, at rogue pieces of yarn in the stitches, to straying up his ink-etched forearms. That’s when he lets her take over the work, when his arms snake over the vale of her waist. When his colossal hands cup lower, when he nudges forward and their mouths brush again. He licks into her mouth and rolls into the gap between her teeth.

Filthy kisses are shrouded behind closed doors, even in the easy ambience of a resort. Furlough on the greedy pursuit of pleasure, on some secluded island with crystalline waters, plus tequila — that’s practically a petri dish for hook up culture. But filthy kisses are saved for the bedroom, and there it’s taste buds doused in citrus limon and gray goose, a tip of a tongue swiping along a row of teeth, basking in the ridges. 

“What do you like, little minx?” Harry murmurs. He climbs the column of her throat with the ruddy border of a hungry cavern, and her pulse murmurs back under his mouth. “Hm?” 

The blunt tip of his forefinger traces her collarbone, follows a line of cleavage, toys at the cinch in her top; unravels her. It splits down the center, and the straps follow limply down her shoulders. Harry pinches a nipple and scrapes his teeth over her neck, humming again. 

Behind closed doors, his red-lycra-mystique (bare, her tits are bare now, in the backdrop of his picture) gets denuded to flesh when she shimmies the dress down her hips. He helps her and then tears his own shirt over his head. It’s hasty, like disrobing takes too much time from a place where time moves slower, riding the water in leisure. Harry still doesn’t know her name, and she slips to her knees, batting her lashes, and takes his buckle apart like unslotting puts the last of the puzzle pieces together. 

When her tongue rides under the ridge of his tip, delving and dragging over the prominent vein jutting on the underside of his shaft, he cranes his neck back and makes a sound like she’s torn into his chest with the tips of her french-polished manicure. He punctuates every pornographic, wet sound with dialogue.

“Christ, you’re a dream.” 

“Fuck, you’re pretty with cock in your mouth.” 

“Yeah, that’s it, just like that, sweetheart.” 

“—Y/N,” red-lycra-mystique supplies, gaze bouncing from the twist of her wrists at his base to his face, and then sweeps his bubbling head over her bottom lip and swallows him down halfway. 

“Y/N,” Harry mirrors, tone bathed in the same sweetness she radiates at his feet. 

And then she trails the very tips of her blunt nails up his sac, and the shiver that rolls up his spine short-circuits every feasible attempt of formulating something in english. Just… gone. Something splinters. 

Harry doesn’t cum all over her tongue, despite the pretty mental image he’d cherish of Y/N on her knees with ribbons of silky white coating the insides of her mouth. He thinks about the way he’d dip the pad of his thumb against her tongue, the way he’d stir and scrub it in. He thinks about her lips latching and her cheeks hollowing. 

He’s got immense willpower, particularly when she takes him all the way down until her nose nearly brushes the neatly-trimmed tuft of hair the tributary of his happy trail pools into. Because then, she pulls off, chin sloppy with saliva, mouth wide, and stares up at him with this wickedly indelicate curl to the corners of her mouth as she gasps in breaths. Like she wants him to. 

Instead, they make it to the bed. He splits her thighs with his palms and spits where she’s puffy and warm, leaky with longing, toying at the seam of her hole with his digits. Smooths the wetness with his thumb when he tucks two fingers in and laves his tongue at the crease between her inner thigh and her cunt. He bumps her clit with the tip and rolls, and her spine arches like the highest point of her torso peaks at the clouds of nirvana. 

“You’re a good girl,” Harry tells her, and his voice is so soft, like he’s reassuring an animal that’s backed itself into a corner, “Want you to drench my face.” 

And she does, because when he holds a placid, unwavering hand out and talks her so sweetly, lips suckling in a vacuumed ‘o’ between her thighs, what can she do besides roll her hips against his mouth in little, desperate juts, face creased before bliss spumes through every major artery.

When Harry sits back, his chin is sticky, glinting in the buttery cast of the lanterns drilled into the ceiling. He kisses her again until her jaw is stained with her own slick, and despite the entire basis of a one night stand, his tongue meddles into her mouth with the same passion of a man carving a piece of her open. A cozy lacuna just for him in the depths of her chest, something that’ll linger and yearn. A hungry chasm that’ll grumble when her cunt pulses — when he’s not there to fill it. She’ll think of him; a stranger’s leg flitting like a passing speck in the background of her photograph. 

Y/N’s cunt hugs him like it can’t get enough. 

Eventually. 

Because at first, it’s: too big, won’t fit, pleated brows when he’d split her spongy walls apart on the latex-coated tip, stretching to tuck in and hovering to imbibe in miniature ticks of her expression. A twitch in her lashes, a shift in the line of her mouth, a little swallow bobbing down the column of her throat. 

“You’re a good girl,” he’d crooned, smoothing a thumb over a rib and then her clit, just to see her squirm more over his cock. 

Eventually, she clambers over his lap, planting her palms back over inky, firm muscle. It’s leverage as she bounces to fill that starving cavity — the one he’d drilled with his tongue, like the shape of him can fill every square inch of space before they never see each other again. Hungry, hungry, hungry. 

“Come on, baby, come on,” Harry coaxes, a low groan mottled with breathy pants, “—Shit.” 

Momentarily, he pauses the guiding grasp he’s got over her hips to drag the pad of his thumb over his tongue lewdly, smearing spit over the digit and swiping circles over her clit, instead. In response, the rolling pace Y/N has set stutters, knees jolting, and her mussed hair spills off her shoulder as she cranes her neck back. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

“Yes, yes, yes—“

His eyes flit from her cunt to the ethereal line of her neck, the borders of her shoulders, the shape of her tits bouncing. 

Ultimately, of course, his gaze winds back down to ogle where they connect, because that’s the view — that’s where she swallows his cock, thighs splayed and trembling, gliding from the tip until about midway before rising and repeating the cycle. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. He draws his thumb lower, lets it meddle where they merge, where her hole flutters and rolls over him, gleaning the sticky arousal that coats his shaft and bringing the pad of it back to her clit. His eyes linger. Flicker up. Return to watch her ride and nearly roll back into his head. 

He’s carved the void, and later, when she tips forward and her nails scrape over his pecs, feral, she whittles her own. Later, the space between his thighs aches and heats. Something pulses on the underside of his balls. It yearns for blue curaçao, pellucid, crashing waters, and a skimpy red bikini. 

[gondiiknowsbest]

Do you have any advice for culling limebloods specifically? My most recent cull is one and he's rather shy at the moment. ~

o I Havent Ever Culled A LimeBlood Specifically MySelf- But Keep In Mind Poor Thing Has Probably Dealt With A Lot Of Bullying. Be Gentle And Let Them Come To You If You Can. Patience Patience o

o If You Need An Excuse To Get Them Out Of Their Block, Troll Ice Cream Never Fails o

o Good Luck! HeHeHeHe o

[beautysamour]

quirofilia with miguel 🤩🤲🏻

𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐓𝐎𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝟓: 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚

— 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

“I can’t,” you whisper, “Need it.”

You close your eyes trying to prevent your gaze from falling to his free hand that was so close to your pussy, “Need what, querida?”

He cups your waist as he thrusts got slower, and deeper, “I can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell me.” He dips his head down to your face, kissing the tip of your nose as you try to separate your wrists that he held together with his other hand.

Your pussy weakly clenches around his cock as he drags his other hand down to the top your pussy, pushing down as he hits your g—spot.

Your eyes flutter open, a mistake honestly, as your eyes roll to the back of your head. A grunt leaves Miguel’ mouth as your pussy spasms, cum leaking out of your pussy as Miguel’ big hand cups your crying cunt.

“Miguel,” you mewl, eyes locking on his hand gripping the headboard, “Miguel, that’s—tha—that’s—“

“Uh huh, keep going,” he scoops up some of your cum with two fingers, “That’s what, mami?”

“That’s—,” you babble as your eyes stay on his hand. It’s so big, the way your pussy fits perfectly in his hand makes you feel weak in the knees every time you remember.

Your pussy squeezes around his dick, no—fingers —as they slowly start moving in and out of your pussy.

“Look at me.”

You rip your eyes away from his arms, mouth opening to say something, just to taste your own cum as Miguel shoves two fingers into your mouth, “Does it taste good, querida?”

He lets go of your wrists, culling your jaw to make sure you couldn’t look away. His mouth drops open, ready to say something but he pauses as he watches you throughly suck and lick your own cum off his fingers.

He notes the dazed, fucked out look in your eyes as you kitten lick the tip of his finger, “You aren’t even listening, huh?”

No, you weren’t. The only thing you were focused on was the fuzzy feeling in your pussy as his finger tips drew circles against your walls, and the ones you were sucking.

A laugh escaped him as he watches the sight below him, “Dios mío, you’re too easy.”

[waxlyricaloperaticmoon]

Questionnnn - do we know what Viago names the ballista bolt poison? I've had 0 sleep, my brain is holding me here against my will

Tip The Scales?

Cull The Hoard?

DeWyrming Solution?!?!

...Roar deal

[notchainedtotrauma]

This public essay turns onto the different visual technologies, as well the different visualities, that Rico Nasty uses to create a sense of proximity, all the while withdrawing her/self from the viewer. In doing so, Rico Nasty creates new avenues of visual sousveillance to be reproduced by Black female artists at large. Those screenshots are all culled from different visuals and exemplify the core meaning of the essay. Since this is a public essay, you can tip by sending something to my Ppl (ccd4t@virginia.edu) or to my K0fi.

[souliebird]

[[and i will never let you down]]

series: daredevil | pairing: benjamin poindexter x reader

summary: in the same universe as dance of the little swans. dex returns to you after being away for a few hours.

triggers: suicidal ideation & other typical daredevil content tags

No one looks twice at Dex as he strolls into the hotel lobby. 

He blends right in with the elite clientele in his pressed business suit and ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think’ attitude. His eyes sweep the floor with the paranoia and intensity that only comes from years of being in active combat zones, looking for any hint of a threat as he makes a beeline for the elevators. No one stands out - he chose this establishment for a reason - but he does not allow his posture to relax until he is alone in the small, sealed box. 

Only then does Dex take a deep steadying breath. 

He rolls his neck, trying to release some tension, but the familiar and soothing ‘crack’ never comes. It hasn’t come since they coated his spine in metal. While he is grateful - as much as he can be - that his mobility was saved, the deep aches and pains that the surgery left in his back sometimes make him wonder about how hard a normal recovery would have been. 

But he always quickly dismisses those thoughts, because if he had been left to rot in prison - immobile and trapped - he never would have found you. 

His lips tip up into a smile as lets himself slowly slip from Mission Mode into Home Mode. He looks down to the small, delicate boutique bag dangling from his fingers. He hopes the gift is enough to make up for having to leave you alone for a few hours. 

Dex felt like his soul had been ripped to shreds when he had told you of his plan. You had looked so scared and upset at the prospect of being by yourself, but he hadn’t had many options. 

He had never really cared about money before - his veteran status and the FBI had kept him financially stable, and he had no desire for material things - but now he is starting from scratch and keeping you safe and pampered is at the forefront of his mind. Luckily, Dex has a few contacts who don't care who he is as a person - only that he can make the shots no one else can - and those types of shots cost a pretty, untraceable, penny. 

The ding of the elevator shakes him from his thoughts and Dex exits with another steadying breath. His stomach starts to turn, and his heart begins to race in his chest as he makes his way towards your suite.

He doesn’t know what he is going to find on the other side and that terrifies him.

You could be curled up in bed.

You could be gone.

You could be dead. 

He fears the last one the most. He understands more than anyone the call to the Darkness being alone brings. He understands wanting it all to just Stop when life crumbles around you - and oh life has so terribly crumbled around you.

Your Dreams have been ripped from you and relentlessly mocked. 

Your relationship had ended in the worst kind of heartbreak and abandonment. 

You have given up on being Alive, but you have yet to take that final step because Dex has been the one to hold you back.

Despite his initial plans to put a bullet neatly between your eyes, you have wormed your way in between his ribs and he will burn down the city and cull everyone in it if it gets you to smile for even a moment. He will drop to his knees at your command - he will do anything and everything for you without a second thought.

Because you are his. 

You are his to protect. To hold. To care for and comfort. 

You are his to share sweet little laughs with and to watch bad movies with. 

You are his to romance with and dine with. 

You are his to listen to and to hear his words.

You are his.

And he is yours. 

You are so good and kind. 

You know he is a Monster. You know who he has killed and how - you know all about his past with the FBI and Fisk. You know about his anger and how he needs things Perfect and how everyone has left him.

You know Dex is fucked up beyond repair, and yet you cup his jaw and kiss his forehead and thank him for his service. 

Murdock and his little friends are only alive because it is the only thing you have asked of Dex, but if Dex opens the door and you are not there to greet him, all of that will go out the window. He’d neatly explode all of their heads - and yours if you had run away from him - before removing his own. 

But he tries to not think about that, because you have to be okay and waiting for him to return.

You have to be. 

When his feet finally, finally, reach the door, he gives it three, slow, solid knocks - letting you know it is him - before he swipes the keycard with a shaking hand. 

He can’t breathe as enters the room. 

The lights are off in the sitting area, but he doesn’t expect you to be in there. He won’t admit to himself that he hurries towards the bedroom - or that a sigh of relief escapes his lips at the sight of a you-shaped lump under the covers. You are completely hidden under them, but there is a steady rise and fall indicating you are breathing. 

The TV is on across from the bed - one of the network news channels is silently showing breaking coverage of the assassination of the Prime Minister of Madripoor. He lets himself take in the scene for a moment, before picking up the remote and turning off the device. 

He sets your gift on the nightstand closest to him before lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed. He hesitates before reaching for you - ghosting his fingers over the blanket-barrier. He doesn’t know if you are asleep or awake in your little cove and Dex would hate himself even more if he woke you from the slumber you so desperately need. 

He whispers your name and his heart jumps for joy when you stir. 

A moment later, your head emerges. Your eyes are bloodshot, and it is clear you have been crying, but in that second, you are smiling and look oh so relieved. 

“You came back.”

He mentally Rages at the man who broke you so thoroughly that you would doubt Dex would return to you, but he doesn’t let that show. He clamps it down hard and instead focuses on the beautiful curve of your lips that is all for him. 

“Of course I came back, angel. You are never going to get rid of me.” A promise he’s told you so many times, but he can’t seem to get to stick in your head. 

You sit up, the blankets piling in your lap, and reveal you are once again wearing one of the t-shirts he bought for himself. His body thrums with approval and he moves his hand to cup your cheek. 

“Is it…is it okay?” You ask hesitantly - quietly - as you lean into his touch. Your eyes dart to the blank TV screen before closing and he more than understands what you are asking of him. 

“It is. I’m sorry it took a little longer than I initially planned,” Dex says as he rubs his thumb over your soft skin. “I got you something to make up for it.”

A small amount of light returns to your eyes when you open them to give him a curious look and he internally crows over his success. 

“You got me something?”

Dex reaches back to grab the bag without his other hand leaving your face and presents it to you with what he hopes is a sheepish smile. 

You nuzzle into his palm as you accept his gift, a beautiful soft look overtaking your features. He memorizes it all as you gently push through tissue paper to find your hidden treasure. 

He doesn’t know exactly what the style of top is called - but it certainly borders on some type of lingerie. It is a little sleeping slip that is all lace and sheer fabric - your breast will be fully covered but the rest leaves little to the imagination. There is a slit up the middle, to expose slivers of skin from your sternum down, but it is tasteful. Matching boy-short style panties are included - Dex balked at the idea of offering you a thong or something crotchless. 

You had briefly eyed a similar looking sleeping set when out shopping a few days ago, but the quality hadn’t been up to standard. It had been too lewd - too cheap - to be worthy of you wearing it. 

You are Dex’s angel - his princess - and what he had picked out was what you deserve to lounge around in. 

You apparently agree. Your smile turns blinding and a moment later you are wrapped around his neck, hugging him like he is a lifeline. He hugs you back just as tightly, trying to absorb you into him even if it’s impossible.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you so much, Dex.” 

“You’re welcome, angel. You’re going to look stunning in it.” 

Your breath tickles his skin as you huff a laugh against him and he’s desperate to stay in that moment forever. 

But as much as he wants it, he can’t bend time to his will and after the shortest eternity later, you pull away from him. 

“I think I need a shower before I put it on and model it for you. Will you join me?”

“Always,” he rushes out, honored you are asking him. He would have followed you into the bathroom anyways - not wanting to be even a room away from you any longer. He’s done it previously - sat on the counter while you spent countless minutes just letting water fall onto your skin. 

You usher him out of the bed, playfully making shooing motions as your mood begins to brighten. He dares to mirror your energy, and once you are standing, he picks you up bridal style. Your arms quickly return to being around his neck and that perfect little smile grows even more.

You let your head rest on his shoulder as he carries you into the bathroom and he loathes that he has to set you down to strip and turn on the shower. He lets you handle the water temperature - you alternate between scalding and barely below skin melting and it feels like the one thing Dex cannot memorize about you. It angers him, but you’ve gently explained it’s based on how you feel in that moment, and it can’t be predicted.  He treasures that you understand his frustration and helped him to find a solution.

Even if that solution is letting you do an iota of work. 

He allows you to help him out of his suit while he removes his shirt from your body. Each touch is slow, methodical, and deliberate - neither he or you are in a hurry, and he likes the care you put in making sure his clothes remain wrinkle free. 

Only when you are both nude and steam has covered the mirrors do you enter into the shower enclosure. Multiple sprays are going, and you hiss with pleasure as the burning water hits your skin, something Dex mimics even though he has no personal preference with how hot it is. 

He has seen you nude many, many times, and has touched almost every inch of your body, but he still turns his back to you to give the illusion of privacy. 

That sort of intimacy isn’t a line you and Dex have crossed yet. Forehead and cheek kisses are plentiful, but his lips have yet to touch yours and he would never even dare to suggest anything sexual with you. He doesn’t crave that release - not like other men do. He wants to bury himself in you to be as close as possible, but he understands that isn’t your desire and he will always be respectful of it. 

You are still his and he is still yours and that is all he needs. 

Dex begins his shower routine using the products you prefer. He would rather use things without a scent - the smell of rich honey tickles his senses a bit but it is what makes you happy and when he was out, putting his nose to his wrist helped to calm his anxieties in a way that reminded him of his long burnt tapes. 

As he starts to dig his fingers into his scalp, he hears you turn to face him. He can see you in the warped reflection of the shower nozzles but pretends he doesn’t as he watches you examine his back. Self-disgust gathers in his chest - from the base of his skull to his tailbone is the thick gnarled scar left over from his operation. The healing process had been hard and the memory of it makes Dex’s teeth gnash. It brings him back to the headspace of laying helplessly on the ground while Murdock failed to kill Fisk. 

The buzzing he hates so much is starting to vibrate within him, but before he can open his mouth to tell you to not look at him, you are stepping forward and hugging him from behind. 

Dex goes completely still, hands on his head, as you nuzzle between his shoulder blades, and then the world stops as your lips find his spine. 

You start at the nape of his neck, then slowly, oh so slowly, begin to place feather light kisses down his scar. 

He can just barely feel it but he thinks this is what is going to kill him. 

Too many emotions surge up into his chest and heart and he doesn’t even know what he is experiencing. He doesn’t know if it is good or bad - but he knows he doesn’t want you to stop despite it being almost too much. He can feel tears starting to mix with the shower spray on his cheeks. 

He is frozen as you trail down his body. 

Your hands start on his chest, making their way south on his front as you lower yourself to get the small of his back, but they never go below his navel. His abs flex under your touch, but you don’t tease or taunt. You just continue with your task, kissing right to the bottom of the scar before starting your way back up. 

His knees are quaking hard when you return to your starting point. You place a firmer kiss to the original start - Dex can hear the wet sounds of your lips against his skin over the sounds of the shower - before turning your head to press your cheek to him and tighten your arms around his chest. 

You press yourself flush to him back as the sweetest words he’s ever experienced begin to pour out of you. 

“Thank you, Dex. For taking care of me. For making sure I’m safe. For being so good to me.” 

“You deserve the world,” he croaks out, surprised he can even speak. 

You squeeze him tighter, and in a soft voice, ask, “would you give it to me?”

“Yes,” he responds instantly. Without question - without thought. Anything - he’d give you anything. He’ll carve out his heart and present it on a platter for you. 

You just have to ask. 

“I can’t give it back,” you whisper against him. “I can’t give you the world.”

He finally is able to move, and he drops his hands to find yours, lacing your fingers with his and gripping you tightly - but not enough to hurt you in any way. 

“You don’t need to. You are my world.” 

It is sappy and pathetic, but it is true. 

You became his world the moment Murdock turned and walked away from you. Murdock abandoned you - he left you to die, from either Dex’s hand or your own - and Dex will never forgive him for it. 

But Murdock’s mistake was Dex’s blessing. 

Dex protects you from your Darkness and you protect him from his. You take the things Dex hates about himself and cradle them close, make him feel like he is a Person instead of a hollow shell of a weapon. 

You are much much more than his North Star. 

You're his Angel.

You bury your face against him and Dex lets you - too scared to move and break the moment. He has no idea you stand under the spray, clinging to each other while he still has shampoo in his hair. It could be minutes, hours, or days - he doesn’t know. He just tries to commit everything to memory - how warm and soft you are against him, how your breath skirts over his skin, how your fingers flex against his. 

Eventually, much too soon in Dex’s opinion, you breathe out, “I’m getting cold,” before starting to pull away. 

Shakily, Dex licks his lips before replying, “let's get back to bed.”

He refuses to allow himself to turn around - to see you as vulnerable as you saw him - instead, he quickly rinses out his hair and forgoes the rest of his routine. 

The water stops as soon as the last of the suds fall from him and a second later, a towel is being passed to his hands. 

It is surprisingly easy to compose himself as he dries off. He watches you from the corner of his eye, envious of the cloth that gets to soak up the water that clings to you. He would lick each droplet off you if you allowed it. 

Your post shower routine is longer than his, so he goes to fetch your new sleeping clothes from the bed, grabbing a pair of sweatpants for himself as he does. 

You smile at him, soft and sweet and Caring, as he lays out your top and panties on the counter.

“Do you want to wait on the bed, so it will be a surprise?” you ask him, a bit of a playful twinkle in your eye. 

He doesn’t - he never wants to be more than an arm’s length from you again - but Dex humors you and goes to sit on the bed. Through the reflections in the windows, he watches you get dressed - ruining any semblance of a surprise. 

Something warm fills his chest as you turn and examine yourself in the mirror, clearly pleased with the way the fabric swirls up when you spin. You smooth your hands over your breast, belly, and sides, before you finally turn and slink your way to him. 

You look Heavenly. The piece flatters your body perfectly and the little boy shorts make the outfit look far more innocent than he suspects it is supposed to be. His body would have no trouble responding if you wanted to slip out of those pretty panties and crawl into his lap. 

Dex wolf whistles as you do another little spin, giving him a proper full view, and you giggle like a schoolgirl. 

“I love it,” you tell him, voice full of mirth. “Thank you, Dex.”

“Of course, angel. Anything for you.”

Anything. 

And one day, you will know he truly, truly means it. 

--

whoops I wrote more of this au im not sorry

[bugwolfsstuff]

Does Cupid shooting Apollo with a love arrow and Daphne with a hate arrow in the myth (that i'm displeased to find out is Ovid's version) not make Apollo also kinda a victim too?

one shaft that rouses love and one that routs it. The first gleams bright with piercing point of gold; the other, cull and blunt is tipped with lead. This one he lodged in Nympha Peneis' [Daphne's] heart; the first he shot to pierce Apollo to the marrow. At once he loves; she flies the name of love, delighting in the forest's depths, and trophies of the chase, a Nympha to vie with heaven's virgin huntress Phoebe [Artemis];

.............

...............

And Venus' [Aphrodite's] son [Eros] replied : ‘Your bow, Phoebus, may vanquish all, but mine shall vanquish you. As every creature yields to power divine, so likewise shall your glory yield to mine.’

—Ovid, Metamorphoses 

Like...does that not mean Cupid's arrows overide all other feelings and therefore make Apollo an unwilling participant here?

Not to say Daphne also wasnt a victim, she definetly was but it seems it was non-consensual for both parties?

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Spinning the Block Part 3

Pairing: Terry Richmond x Officer Jessica "Jess" Sims

Warning(s): 18+ Animal violence (hunting)

Summary: Jess tries to avoid running into Terry again, but a tip given to her may reveal who killed Mike in prison.

Word count: 4. 4K

"After all that we've been through

I know we'll make it,

I know the way

The question is it true

There is nothing we can't do

I see you along the way baby

The stillness is the move"

Solange – "Stillness is the Move"

Jess spread the bucket of corn on the cob that she soaked for a week on the ground. Dawn broke an hour earlier and the morning sky barely turned a pale peach to match the time of day. She kicked around the ears of corn that soured over time and spread a pungent odor in the air. The perfect bait for wild hogs that roamed on her granddaddy's land.

She lifted her high-powered Marlin 336 rifle onto her shoulder and carried the empty bucket away, stashing it behind a snag tree. Trudging past the bait, she joined up with her father and grandfather. Wild hog hunting had been passed down in her family for five generations. Her hunting knife rested against her right hip for dressing up game on site. Plenty of wild game thrived on the property — deer, turkey, raccoons, rabbit, alligator, wood ducks — but the Sims family loved some good feral hog meat.

Louisiana hog hunting required patience, a talent for shooting, and quick thinking on the spot. In the old days, her grandfather Hebert used trained hunting dogs with her father, Jermaine, and her three uncles. The dogs had all died off over the decades except for a ten-year-old brown and black hound dog named Redbone, the last of his lineage. Jess lived with Redbone and Hebert on the property. Ever since she lost her job with the police department because of its shut down over Terry's case, Hebert's house became her refuge. She took care of him, and he gave her shelter from financial ruin.

Redbone, blind in one eye, rested near Hebert's feet behind the camo netting they used to blend into the surroundings. Hebert stretched his legs in a folding chair and peered out into the trees with his binoculars. His lank gray hair looked thinner pulled back in a long ponytail that touched the middle of his back. She noticed the once sallow coloring of his fair skin had improved. His health hadn't relapsed since she'd been home most days while unemployed. Rheumatoid arthritis wore on him before. Perhaps her presence energized him. He had his good days and bad days with pain in his hands and feet. But today was a good one. Hebert could bend his fingers and shuffle his feet along without wincing.

The hogs roused up early in the morning and stayed active, openly, until full light. Hebert wanted to participate in the hunting, and Jess worried that a long outing would bother him. She found a doctor that prescribed marijuana usage to help his pain management, and since she no longer worked, he shared his weed with her on some nights when inflammation got bad. He toked on a little before they left the house. It pleased her that the effects lasted.

Jermaine nudged the drag sled prepared to haul the meat out.

"We'll probably need to take down about three or four…if we're lucky," Jermaine said.

"We're in the best hotspot, Daddy," Jess said.

Jermaine patted her shoulder and slid his hunting goggles down over his eyes. The feral hogs on their land were invasive, and the state welcomed hunters culling their populations. Hebert often gave permission to outsiders to come on their land to hunt for a small fee. He already allowed loggers to remove walnut trees annually for extra income. Any money he made from those two ventures he split among his children and used the rest to pay his property tax.

They perched quietly behind their camo netting for four hours. Jess noticed Redbone's nose twitching, and she slid her wrap-around shades on and peeked through her telescopic sight. Four rotund hogs barreled into view, chomping down on the corn.

Jess lined up her shot. Unfortunately, the wind shifted slightly, blowing their scent toward the animals. A mottled pink one caught the odor of human and hound, alerting the others.

BLAM!

BLAM!

Jess and Jermaine blasted the brains of two hogs, causing the others to scatter. They both used their levers to reload and popped off two more rounds. Jess downed another hog while her father clipped the shoulder of the one he aimed for. Jumping out from behind the camo, Jermaine went after the injured hog to finish it.

"Daddy! Watch out!"

Another aggressive hog appeared from out of nowhere and charged Jermaine. Jess shot it behind the ear, and it dropped a foot away from her father.

"Getting slow," Jess teased.

"Some good shootin', Jess," Hebert called out.

"Learned from the best," she said, and winked at him.

Jermaine killed the injured hog, and Jess dragged over the sled. Her father was a big, muscular, cornbread fed man, and he used that strength to drag two hogs onto the sled. She packed up the camo net and grabbed the bucket.

"Grandpa, I'll get the chair in a minute. You just relax," Jess said.

Redbone jumped around being frisky and followed Jess behind her father. They trudged along the wooded area until they reached Jermaine's truck. She helped him lift each hog onto the truck bed and they headed back to Hebert and repeated the process two more times. Hebert admired the hundreds of pounds of fresh meat piled on the truck.

"Gon' be some good barbecue," Hebert said.

Back home, Jermaine and Jess set about cutting up the meat behind the house. They donned protective covering and surgical gloves to prevent bacterial contamination.

After gutting the pigs, Jess and her father strung them up under their hunter gazebo. Herbert added salt to three large coolers half filled with ice on standby. Jermaine would transfer the meat to his house and a few others covered in the ice, and Jess's mother would prep their share for the big Saturday cookout.

Jess used her big knife to skin the carcasses, and then she dove right in to carve out sections of meat. She deboned joints, cut off shoulders, back strap, ham parts, hocks, and kneckbones. She used a smaller knife to work on the tenderloin parts and ribs once they moved the rest to a work table nearby. The pigs were too lean to carve out bacon, so she worked efficiently to get as much useful meat as possible off the carcass. Jermaine used a lopper to snap apart larger bones, joints, and the heads when needed. It took them about an hour to cut and quarter the various parts needed for Saturday. The rest would go into a deep freezer for winter soup beans and stews. Her father would drop off the unused parts at a rendering plant to be turned into fertilizer. It was a good day of hunting.

She cleaned up the gazebo and work table and then took a shower. Hebert caught up on his marathon viewing of Law & Order episodes in the livingroom. She fixed him an early dinner of baked sweet potato with turnip greens and fried catfish, placing it on a TV dinner tray in front of his recliner. Sitting near him on the couch, she ate with him and quietly watched cops go after bad guys. After Terry's case, Jess couldn't watch the show the same way again.

Terry.

Jess nibbled on her catfish. Was he still in town? She planned on staying away from the town square. No need to tempt fate and run into that man again. He was a past that needed burying.

The landline rang, and Jess answered it. Her friend Melody sounded breathless.

"Jess…girl…come on down to the Pit with me and Alexa tonight. It's Ladie's night and free cover. Alexa doesn't have to work tomorrow, so she's up for some drinking and dancing."

Jess glanced at her grandfather.

"Who is it?" he asked.

Jess covered the mouthpiece.

"Melody wants me to go down to the Pit tonight with Alexa."

Hebert waved his hand.

"Go on and get outta the house. Do you some good to be out with your girlfriends. I'll be okay by myself."

"You sure?"

"I got Redbone with me."

"Promise not to overdo it on the weed?"

"A man runs out of his house naked one time, and now his granddaughter can't trust him to be by hisself," he grumbled.

Jess giggled.

"Okay, I'm in," she said into the phone.

"Oh, good! Dress real cute, because you know Zion is on the prowl for you."

Jess sucked her teeth.

"I wish y'all would stop tryna fix me up with that man."

"Girl, do you know how hard it is to find a fine man that's single, child-free, and looking to settle down right away? He's had his eye on you for the longest."

"With all that's been going on with me, I don't see how he could be interested."

"Jess, hush, now. All that shit is over and done with. Time for a new start… and time for you to throw your hat in the ring before he gets snatched up. Be ready by seven thirty. Cover is free until nine. We get there early and we can get a good booth seat by the dance floor."

"Alright. I'll be ready. But I'm driving there myself."

She hung up and sighed.

"You don't sound excited," Hebert said.

"It's a setup. They're tryna get me with Zion."

"Zion is a nice fella. Decent family. I know his grandfather real well. You not interested in dating?"

"People think partnering up with somebody is going to make me happy now that I'm not working. I need a job, not a man."

"Zion makes good money down at the plant. Let a man spoil you a little bit if he wants to. You ain't gotta marry him or nothin'."

"You right, Granddaddy. You right. I just don't want to feel pressured about it, like I can't get a man on my own…if I wanted one."

She lifted his empty plate and glass from his tray.

"You want anymore to eat?"

"Nah, I'm full. That was a tasty dinner. Thank you."

She picked up her empty plate and piled it on his. While washing dishes in the kitchen, she thought of what to wear.

The Pit smelled like perfumed sweat and chicken grease, a thick country kind of odor that lingered in the air. Jess didn't know if that was a good or bad thing. She flat ironed her hair so that it looked long and silky falling down her back, but by the time she got inside the jumping club, her edges curled back because of the heat. A live band kicked up some fiery zydeco music, and she danced with several men before taking a breather at a booth seat with her friends. Several men bought them drinks, and Jess sulked a bit when she didn't find Zion anywhere. All that talk about him seeking her affections by her friends didn't pan out. She twisted her hair into a high bun and sipped on some bourbon. Revealing some cleavage kept plenty of other suitors barking up her tree.

Shelby Springs men loved big women. The more rolls on the belly and back, the better, too. The women were known to be talented cooks in the kitchen and in the bedroom, and southern Black Creole men had a predilection toward securing one and wifing them up. They liked buxom chests, real asses, and lively personalities.

Jess knew she was a catch.

Men eyed her up and down the moment she walked in the door, displaying her wares and swinging her hips from east to west. Tight booty-hugging jeans. Low cut V-neck top with her good strapless push-up bra. High heel ankle boots gave her extra va-voom. Her breasts were always her best lure, and then the men noticed she had a pretty face to match all the big girl curves. Pear-shaped with a short waist, Jess could use her front and back to attract dance partners.

The Pit was full of Black Creoles and Black Cajuns. There's no real hardcore distinction between the two in Jess's mind. After hundreds of years, they were all a big pot of gumbo culturally. Most of the Black Cajuns descended from the French Canadians that migrated to Louisiana from Acadie. Her great-grandfather used to tell Hebert stories about their white side. That's how Jess learned that Acadians were referred to as 'cadians by English speakers in Louisiana that eventually mutated into 'cajuns'.

The Black Creoles had immigrant French and Italian roots from Europe with some Indigenous heritage that spread out from New Orleans. Many of the Black Creoles had bloodlines all the way from Haiti. Out of the two, Creoles were the wilder by far because they had liberation DNA encoded in them from their African and Native ancestry. There was something about that Black and Red mix that stood out sometimes. Whenever Jess had to be called out as a cop to break up fights or do a welfare check, she could tell how things would go down by the ancestry. Black Cajuns valued communication first before they went off…but the Creoles? Pfft. Those negroes were cayenne pepper. Fists first, questions last.

Terry Richmond was definitely a Creole.

Jess chugged down her drink. The man lingered in her mind like a severe headache. He hugged her, and she knew what those muscles felt like now…the same ones that beat the ass of nearly a dozen men in front of her without using a gun. Pure Creole fury.

He smelled good, too.

Jess stood and walked around with Melody and left their two other friends, Patricia and Alexa, to watch their purses and seats. She tapped her feet to the hot, rambunctious music and searched around for another dance partner.

A man at the bar kept staring at her. He had a lean, rawhide build and purposely kept his baseball cap low on his face to obscure his eyes. Every few seconds, he glanced over at Jess. She sensed he wasn't interested in dancing or checking her out sexually. He studied her. She moved away to see if he would follow, and he did. She positioned herself behind some tall men near the end of the bar, facing the dance floor. Melody went to the restroom, and Jess waited for her. Right when Melody came back, a cute short king grabbed her hand to dance and pulled her away from Jess. Zion appeared then, and Jess forgot all about the man with the cap.

"Where you been?" Jess asked.

Zion grinned, flashing her big teeth. A husky man nearly six feet tall, he had rugged good looks and a flirtatious voice that sounded playful in her ear. Sweat shined up his dark brown skin. A crisp new haircut and fancy fits helped him stand out from the crowd, especially his gator skin boots.

"I've been looking for you, sweet thing," he uttered with sly charm.

"That's what I hear."

"What we gonna do about it, then?"

Jess grabbed his hand and dragged him out to the center of the dance floor, hugging her body tight against his as the ricochet of silver spoons dragging across a metal washboard and a reedy accordion squeezed by a heavyset man singing in French Creole controlled their spinning and grinding in time to the music. Jess snaked her hips and Zion swiveled his. The heat of her crotch rested on his thigh as they wiggled down to the floor and back up, the old school French La La music of her granddaddy's day pushing them to go faster and faster. Zion swung her out in a catch and release move and they yelled their delight at being alive in a sweltering club. God, it felt good to dance her blues away!

They stayed on the packed dance floor for three full songs until Jess begged for a break in her boots. She grabbed her purse and took a breather outside. A quick call on her smartphone reassured her that her grandfather was tucked in bed for the night. He told her not to come home early if she didn't need to, hinting that it was okay to hook up with Zion if she wanted.

She hung up and wiped perspiration from her brow, and noticed the reflection of the strange man behind her from the car window. Digging into her purse, she pretended to put her phone away and reached for her nine millimeter handgun to scare him. He caught her in the blind sight of the club, where no one would see or hear them by the SUV. She spun around and aimed it at his chest.

"The fuck are you following me for?" she barked.

The man held his hands up.

"Easy…I just want to talk to you."

"About what?"

"Terry Richmond."

She narrowed her eyes. Kept the gun on him.

"What about him?"

"I know who you are and I know what those cops did to him…and his cousin."

The man glanced around to make sure no one heard them.

"I have some information and know who killed Mike Simmons. I was at the prison where he was murdered."

Jess drew in a sharp breath.

"You betta not be fucking lying."

"I'm not. I also know the location of the weapon that was used on him. Hid it myself."

"Where?"

"We can't talk here. I'll meet you somewhere safe. You choose where. But I'ma need some money for the information to help me get outta town. It'll be too dangerous for me to stay here once I tell you."

"There's always some catch involving cash."

"It is what it is."

"How much?"

"Ten thousand dollars."

Jess rolled her eyes.

"You think I'm supposed to pay you that?"

"Not you…him. I know he's in town. I saw you with him."

She kept the gun on him and pulled out her cell.

"Give me your number."

"225-342-6863"

She typed and then glared at him.

"What's your name?"

His eyes diverted toward noisy patrons leaving the club in the opposite direction.

"Zeb Chapman."

Jess took a long, hard look at him.

"Zion's brother? How long have you been out of prison?"

"Eighteen months."

She relaxed and put away her weapon. Slinging her purse across her shoulders, Jess stared at him, full of curiosity.

"Call me and tell me where to meet you, Jess. I swear this ain't no con. I shouldn't even be seen with you. If they know I contacted you, they'd kill me."

"They?"

Zeb's jittery moves let her know he was truly nervous.

"Call me."

Zeb scurried back into the club. Jess stood next to her car to gather her thoughts. She assumed the "they" Zeb mentioned must've been the gangsters that had it out for Mike for snitching on a mob boss back east. It was the main reason Terry was vigilant about getting his cousin's bail. An uncomfortable tightness clenched her stomach. She called Melody on her phone.

"Where are you?" Melody squeaked, with the feisty zydeco music cracking in the background.

"I have a headache and went to my car. I'm going to head home early."

"Okay, call me and let me know you made it home safe. Are you good to drive?"

"I'm fine."

"I'm sorry you're not feeling well. Zion is looking for you."

"Tell him I'll catch him on the dance floor another time."

"Will do."

Jess dug into her purse again and pulled out a business card at the bottom. Terry's motel number was a few touches away on her phone. It might be too late to call. Plus, she didn't want him to have her number. She could just drive over there, knock on his door, and give him the information directly. He could pass it off to the authorities and she could wash her hands of the whole thing.

She popped open the trunk and rummaged around for something else to put over her top. Just a gray long-sleeve shirt sat under a pile of plastic recycled shopping bags. She glanced around and quickly yanked off her sexy top and traded it for the gray shirt.

Loading the GPS with the motel address, Jess quelled the anxiousness rising in her chest. Her Durango rode smoothly on the highway and she arrived at the rinky-dink establishment in less than twenty minutes. She parked at the far end of the guest parking and watched the property. Terry's room was the middle one on the bottom floor. The outside light was on and the curtains were drawn. She couldn't tell if the indoor lights were on because the curtains looked dark and heavy. Debating to get out or not, Jess sat in the SUV for half an hour, mustering up the guts to face him. Eventually, she hopped out and strode toward his room.

She knocked on the door and waited.

Knocked again.

No answer.

She closed her eyes, thankful that he wasn't there. It would be better to deal with everything in the morning with the soothing light of day. She turned to go back to her vehicle and bright headlights blasted her eyes. A car pulled in front of the empty parking space facing Terry's door. Summer and Terry stared at her in surprise. They both stepped out of Summer's car and faced her.

"Hey," she said.

Terry's lips quirked up into a half smile. The whites of his eyes looked pink under the overhead light of his room. But the green stayed intense…probing. He had a way of looking at people that unraveled them. Jess glanced at Summer.

"Summer was dropping me off," Terry said.

"Yeah, we just had dinner…dropping him off for the night," Summer said.

Terry took in her uneasy stance. It was after eleven at night. He turned to Summer.

"Thanks for a great meal, and the ride back," he said.

"No problem. Talk to you another time. Before you leave."

Summer awkwardly looked at Jess.

"Good seeing you, Jess."

"Yeah."

"Night y'all," Summer said.

She climbed into her car and drove off. Terry used a motel card to slip inside the door handle slot of room six instead of five. An audible click sounded off, and Terry opened the door wide.

"Come in," he said.

He reached inside and flicked on a light. Jess walked in before he did. Everything in the simple room was neat and undisturbed.

"Sit," he said, offering her the only chair in the room.

He sat on his bed.

"There's no air conditioning in room five. It broke before I went to dinner with Summer, so the manager switched me into this room. I'm glad you showed up. I had no way to contact you about the change. What brought you here so late?"

"A man approached me outside of a club tonight. He's been watching me and said he knows who killed your cousin. He wants to meet in a safe place."

Jess watched the information spread across Terry's features like water rippling across a pond. His eyes bore into hers like a sun blazing through a magnifying glass, causing her to shift uncomfortably in her seat and dart her gaze elsewhere. Like the wall to her right.

"Who is he?"

"He claims to have been in the prison with Mike when it happened. He's scared, and he also wants you to pay him ten thousand for the information."

Terry bolted from the bed.

"Take me to him right now."

He loomed over her, and those damn eyes rooted her to the chair.

"Jess…take me to him."

It was a stern command.

She jumped up.

"I'll give you his number—"

"If he's still at the club, you know what he looks like and can point him out to me. I need to talk to him tonight."

"It might spook him. He said he'll be in danger once he tells you. The money is for his escape from town."

Terry walked around the bed and pulled open the closet door. He dug into a suitcase, pulling out a fresh shirt. He took off the one he had on and replaced it with a form-fitting black shirt that fit his chest like new skin. Jess averted her gaze. His dark chinos and stylish black Moschino boots didn't need changing. He tucked a pair of shades into his shirt.

"C'mon…you drive," he said.

She couldn't protest. The determination in his face and steps forced her to comply and follow him.

Outside, she led him to her Durango.

"He might be gone already."

"Then we'll call him if he is."

She drove him in silence and slid into a parking spot not too far from her original one earlier. He climbed out and she walked to the back of her SUV. She opened her trunk and picked up her sexy top.

"Turn your head, please," she said.

Terry looked away, and she pulled off the long sleeve shirt, switching back to her previous top. She adjusted it and smoothed back her hair. He turned back around and her stomach filled with butterflies. Her cleavage worked its magic despite the circumstances, and Terry showed his hand by glancing at her breasts. He threaded his fingers with hers and tossed his shades on, pulling her toward the club entrance.

"Once we get inside, you play it cool. Understand? We're just on a night out together. When you spot him, whisper in my ear," he said.

The words flew right over her head. His hand was gentle, yet strong, holding hers. She could feel underboob sweat breaking out on her breasts. They reached the front entrance, and Jess took a deep breath. Terry squeezed her hand, reassuring her, and they stepped inside together.

Part 4 HERE.

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[tragedy-of-commons]

step away.

── alhaitham x gn!reader

summary: You seek a reprieve from what is considered "normal".

contains: modern au, nebulous work setting, alcohol discussed but no one actually gets drunk, word vomit, coworkers, implied autistic reader

word count: 2.0k

notes: idk where this came from. uh. reader's relationship with him warrants closer inspection. hehe

The venue wasn’t anything extraordinary, but it was still a far cry from your normal. 

A strip of hospitality suites and conference rooms connected by carpeted hallways, staffed by burly, tired security guards stoically trying to coexist with the raucous speakers. Their bass-driven reverberations could be heard even a floor above, where guests try even now to settle down in their hotel rooms. 

Or, alternatively, said hotel rooms are empty, vacated by their denizens - which happen to mostly consist of your coworkers; a sizable lot are still inside, partaking in drunken karaoke - or even worse - social niceties. 

That was one of the catches to this whole trip: you were brought in here for work. 

Suffice to say, these things have never been your scene. The noise is always borderline unbearable, you’re expected to clean up and burn valuable gas money (that’s not comped like the rooms are - tax write-off it is then), and you always feel so dreadfully out of place, no matter your role in the event. 

Speaking of, the whole reason you bothered showing up in the first place is because you were tasked with the responsibility of giving a concise, edifying lecture on “any topic of your choice”. 

Talk about a fool’s errand. When the memo was unceremoniously dropped into your inbox, you almost laughed, because it sounded like an assignment reminiscent of your highschool Speech 101 class (required credit).

Not to mention, everyone comes to these functions to get drunk - save for you and a certain someone - so preaching to your subordinates and superiors about anything would just result in syrupy laughter and jeering anyway, regardless of the speech’s content. 

Or just eerie silence, because you’ve never been a team player. You’ve been told that your resting bitch face is pretty strong. 

To put it simply: asking you to give a lecture at this gala was frivolous, unnecessary, and of no benefit to you. You even complained as much up the ladder, but you were only passed back down the telltale chorus of a thousand crickets. 

And then, right after, a branch-wide email was sent out tacking on the (apparently unimportant) detail of Oh, sorry, we forgot to mention it, but your holiday bonuses will be awarded at the eastern banquet hall. If you don’t attend, you’ll still get them, but it’ll take four weeks for them to be mailed out. Happy fucking holidays.

The reasons to go were, unfortunately, plentiful - and stacked against you, leaving you dejected and packing your bags like you were going off to war, never to return. But, thankfully, there was one silver lining culled from the tipped scale.

You and your partner, Alhaitham, are employed at the same practice. 

Sure, this feat makes commuting easier, and so does coordinating vacation days and leisure time to align with both of your needs as they evolve - but it also meant, then, that you could drag him along. It meant that you didn’t have to be miserable alone, faced with the challenge of I don’t want to do this, I’d rather quit than do this, and finally, I’d rather burn in hell than do this.

And it wasn’t particularly hard to convince him. Nostalgically juvenile parties with people he couldn’t care less about aren’t his scene either, far from it - but he wasn’t required to give a lecture. He could leave anytime he pleased, trekking back up to the hotel room and enjoying its free amenities for a night, book in hand. 

“We aren’t hurting financially. I’m able to wait for my bonus,” he’d initially reasoned with you, clearly uninterested. “If you’re attempting to entice me, I’d rescind avarice as a potential motivator.” 

Quickly, you’d changed your tune, deflating. “I’d—I’d really like you there. For moral support, I mean. If I have to brave these fuckwads alone, I’ll end up burnt out and crabby for a week, at least.”

Alhaitham had spared you a glance then, satisfied with your candor. “Alright.”

Then, you kissed him on the cheek while he tried to tamp down the quirk of his lip, and life dragged on until the fateful day (of reckoning). 

The drive was hellish, thanks to everyone and their mother pulling into the city for some kind of convention or another - hundreds of cars crammed into the same, discordant business district. You took up the mantle of getting both of you there on time, which was a lot harder than it should’ve been. The GPS mischievously led you astray multiple times, the robotic narration dominating most of the ride. But in the end, you wrangled the dependable SUV en route. 

(Hayi napped for most of the trip. You’re grateful for that; you don’t think you could’ve lived down your nonexistent sense of direction while he was conscious. He usually drives you around anyway…)

With that, you settled into the parking garage with little issue. Loading luggage up onto a cart and checking in wasn’t that notable, either, but you did shut down mid-conversation with one of the affable front desk ladies, and your partner had to tie up the loose ends regarding payment in your stead. 

You remember his voice, a tinge lower from sleep, hurrying things along in that no-nonsense tone you’ve grown so fond of. 

You remember his voice so well because that’s when your nerves started to act up.

The room was up to par, boasting two queen-sized beds, a bathroom, and the standard compact living area. At that point, he definitely began to catch on, his verdant eyes pointedly fixated on the tremulous fumbling of your keycard or the methodical yet neurotic way you unpacked your things. 

It’s the little things that define a relationship.

“You’re truly not obligated to go,” he’d reminded you, practically roosting, posture ramrod straight yet relaxed against a chair. It’s crazy how much you were able to discern from just a single glance - you could practically see the criticisms Alhaitham had about the desk set’s quality and comfortability, all of it in the minute misgivings of his features. 

The way he was looking at you then - only a select few people could’ve placed it as soft - you being among those select few. He’d aptly continued, “Everyone will be three sheets to the wind. You and I both know that no one will be patrolling, making sure you give a sanitized pep-talk on the importance of a strong work ethic.”

“I know,” you’d sighed, flitting back and forth between the modest closet and the innards of your suitcase resting supine on your claimed bed. “But we’re already here, and I know Setaria saw us down at reception.”

“So?”

“She’s gonna ask a lot of questions if I flake at the last minute.”

“Let her. You’re stressing yourself out over practically nothing - consider that.”

You remember groaning and then collapsing onto his neighboring bed, lamenting his damnable sensibility. Deciding to heed his reassurance, because it was reassurance (you know this nerd like the back of your hand), you bit the bullet and got ready anyway, leaving your partner to his own devices.

Everything after that blurred together. You left Alhaitham in room 330, trundling in and out of elevators and through elaborate corridors - the catacombs that led you to the banquet hall was just a prelude of confusion and adversity. For most of the party’s duration, you could barely hear yourself think (as expected), but wondrously, no one paid you enough mind to strike up conversation. One glance at your laminated, nametagged lanyard was enough to scare them off.

The catering job was nothing to sneeze at either. Under strobe lights and through your acute, unpleasant vertigo, you saw many dishes and hors d’oeuvres divided among tables that you couldn’t bother visiting or taking a closer look at. 

It was too loud, too uncomfortable - as most things are for you.

It’s exactly 11:32 in the evening when you step away from the party. 

The main hall sectioning your practice’s festivities off into rooms diverges a number of ways; a left here, you end up in the lobby. A right there, and you end up in an outlet mall meant to eke as many purchases out of trashed vacationers as possible. But a combination of the two directions leads you to the hotel gardens.

Stepping out into the mouth of the retreat, your lips part in awe. It’s not very big, the whole area spanning about two conference rooms. But there are maintained, lush beds of flowers outlining a small gazebo, the structure illuminated by a few lanterns bolted to its latticework. 

In the midst of so much business, it’s almost a little startling to come across a safe haven from social affairs - something entirely pulled together by the absence of humanity and the abundance of nature. 

Your feet ache. Immediately, you ascend the rustic staircase up into the gazebo. Its steepled ceiling and observation railings warmly welcome you. Deciding to rest your elbows and stare transfixed at the greenery, propped up and mentally checked out, your thoughts take an aimless journey.

Why exactly are you here?

It’s not because of any holiday bonus, not really; you wouldn’t have stepped away from the party if you were dead set on extra money. Are you here because you want to grow closer with your colleagues? Hell no, especially since bringing yourself to go to work everyday is such a challenge in its own right.

You think you’re here because you want to feel normal. 

That’s not to say you crave all the trimmings of a conventional work-life balance. No, you don’t want to keep up with friendships you don’t care about. No, you don’t want to know the origins of every inside joke in painstaking detail. What you want, really, is to have your cake and eat it too; you want to experience being a social butterfly without the commitment it comes with, for one night, just to see if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.

That’s why you’re here. And no, it’s not it’s all cracked up to be. Probably. You’ll never truly know, because this experience is one lacking the aforementioned commitment, but the taste you were given was sour on your tongue. You didn’t like it. 

It’s not… you. This is not your scene, and you knew that going in. Stupid. 

Truthfully, you didn’t even prepare any notes for your presentation. Maybe, deep down, you knew you wouldn’t be able to get through the night, pretending to be something you’re not. The way tonight has unfolded makes you giddy with irony, bursting at the seams with self-awareness.

You cup your hand over your mouth and laugh, snickering quietly to yourself in the solitude of the gardens.

At least you didn’t commit so much as to hit up the bar, stuttering out an order that makes no sense and unwisely pounding back a glass to feel, uh, normal-er. No, that’s something you’d do a few years ago, when you used to masquerade around a lot more, to feel normal. That’s a win in your book. 

You’re not the same person you used to be, even if doubts emerge and make you do things you normally wouldn’t. You’re still young and figuring it all out.

Suddenly, your phone pings twice. You vehemently shake your head, awakening from your stupor, then fishing the device out of your pocket, squinting at the way your home screen lights up. It wholly ruins the natural and introspective essence this sanctuary has, but oh well. 

The texts materialize and hover over your wallpaper - which happens to be a sentimental photo of you and Alhaitham, your arm obnoxiously slung around his shoulder while he stares into the camera, unamused but unwilling to shove you away. 

It’s the little things that define a relationship.

Hayi: When you’re finished wrapping up, it’d be in your best interest to hurry back.

Hayi: Your show is on. Though it’s the CN dub, I’d be happy to translate - the subtitles aren’t doing it justice.

…

You’re heading back up to room 330, everything else be damned. 

You: I’m coming. I love you <3

Hayi: I love you too.